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Current transport infrastructure in Europe depends on numerous steel and concrete-steel bridges, often from high-strength steel. One of the main engineering challenges related to such bridges is to ensure their reliability during their whole lifespan. It is not easy as load by automotive or rail transport typically induces fatigue effects, especially on steel parts. It is usually necessary to execute periodic inspections which should make possible timely detection of issues (cracks) which would make effective repairs possible. Thus, it is important to be able to plan these inspections in right times and to inspect the critical details with focusing on their fatigue damage. The paper discusses some challenges related to this approach. The Direct Optimized Probabilistic Computation method (DOProC) is combined with linear fracture mechanics analytical solution to find the time of the first inspection. Then it is assumed that modified solution can be used to find times of further inspections. In the paper there are discussed issues related to the speed of the DOProC in such application and the approaches to limit the computational time without a loss of precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the Gender Equality Network in the European Research Area (GENERA) Network/Community of Practice, and its work on mental health issues in academia. GENERA's vision is to support, coordinate and improve gender equality in physics through various working groups on gender, diversity and inclusivity topics. Mental health issues can be especially distressing in academia, owing to the constant expectations of high performance for both faculty and students. Along with depression and anxiety, GENERA also addresses other issues such as sexual assault and suicide. This paper outlines the need for creating awareness and lifting the stigma of mental health problems in academia by using the available resources at institutional levels, such as improving training and reconsidering the reward system to include successful mentoring and support for student well-being. Finally, GENERA proposes specific methodologies for improving the mental health of students and faculty. These approaches will be presented during an upcoming workshop series on the topic, which will welcome participants from Europe and around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the current policy context that encourages the use of renewable energy sources given unstable electricity prices in Europe. The evolution of the technologies used to manufacture photovoltaic panels has made their performance increase in recent years and their price affordable. The instability of electricity prices and attractive prices are the main reasons why many domestic electricity consumers are installing photovoltaic panels on the roofs of their houses or on the ground, thus becoming electricity producers. These panels will support the electricity needs of the home and the excess production can be stored in batteries or fed into the grid for neighbours. The paper also presents a scenario that could lead to grid instability in the event of an overproduction of electricity produced by photovoltaic systems feeding electricity into the grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic masonry characterizes large part of the building heritage in Europe and worldwide but may suffer for structural weaknesses related to material deterioration, long-term fatigue, over-time modifications, accidental actions, seismic vulnerability... For the structural refurbishment of these building assets, the use of fiber-based composites has widely spread within the last twenty years as strengthening strategy. In particular, the coupling of fiber-based meshes or textiles with mortar plasters (the so-called Textile Reinforced Mortar technique) gained great relevance due to effectiveness, easiness of installation, compatibility of materials, durability and reversibility. The development of design methods for this new technique requires, beside a robust experimental database, also reliable and optimized numerical strategies for the performance estimations. In this context, the paper introduces a simplified finite-element modelling approach, based on multi-layered 3D elements, for the assessment of the structural performances of masonry assemblages strengthened with Textile Reinforced Mortar (TRM). In particular, the free, open source, finite element code OOFEM is adopted to perform non-linear static analyses of masonry samples subjected to in-plane or out-of-plane actions. Brick elements with laminated material composition are adopted for the simulations, with layers stacked along the sample thickness: the inner layer for the masonry and a couple of outer layers for the plaster and for the fiber-based reinforcement. The Gauss integration rule is used for setting up integration points in each layer, which number can be specified independently for each layer. The materials mechanical parameters for each layer are set in accordance to the results of experimental characterization tests available in the literature. The reliability of the simulations is assessed through comparison with previous experimental outcomes concerning tests on TRM strengthened masonry elements, namely diagonal compression tests, in-plane three-point bending tests and out-of-plane four-point bending tests. The model is feasible to reproduce the typical failure modes of masonry elements for both in-plane actions (diagonal cracking and in-plane bending failure) and out-of-plane actions (out-of-plane bending failure) also at advanced damage levels and thus can represent a useful and optimized tool to investigate on wider samples, such as entire walls with openings, even under combined in-and out-of-plane loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a monitoring method of the climate of a naturally ventilated crawl space in Central Europe. The aim of the study is to analyse the temperature and humidity in the crawl space during the one-year period. The study monitors two wooden detached houses that have crawl space. The monitoring started in March and April 2022. The air temperature, relative humidity and the surface temperature of the boards and the ground is continuously monitored in the crawl spaces. In addition, the air flow is measured in one of the houses. In Central Europe, a common type of foundation for wooden detached houses is strip foundation with a concrete slab-on-ground. The aim of this study is to spread knowledge on the topic of crawl space design, which is used minimally in Central Europe although the system has its major advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial markets were the first to react on COVID-19 pandemic and were also very sensitive on following lock-outs, support policies and restrictions. Though equally exposed to the threat and lack of information, different countries reacted to the disease in a different way. In this paper we focus on European financial markets and respective representative indices to analyze their characteristics and study their response to the economic changes that followed the outbreak of the pandemic. We use six European stock market indices (FTSE 100, CAC 40, DAX, IBEX 35, FTSE MIB and STOXX Europe 600) to compare their performance before and after 2020, assess their reaction on COVID-19 and discuss their recovery. Using MLE estimation and BFGS optimization we analyze return distribution and use them as proxy for pandemic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a cutting-edge technology that enables virtual and physical objects to connect and communicate, resulting in new digitized services that enhance our quality of life. Despite its many advantages, the current centralized architecture of IoT poses various challenges such as single point of failure, security concerns, privacy issues, lack of transparency, and data integrity problems. These obstacles hinder the future progress of IoT applications. Moving the IoT to one of the decentralized technologies is the right solution to these issues. Blockchain is considered as the most common and popular decentralized technology. It is a new technology that operates with a decentralized, distributed, public, and real-time ledger to store transactions between IoT nodes. The main focus of this paper is on utilizing Blockchain technology for the IoT, specifically showcasing how different features of Blockchain can be utilized as a service in various IoT applications. The increasing penetration of Blockchain and IoT in various companies and industries primarily enables secure storage of large amounts of sensitive data, which can grow at a tremendous pace for the global IoT Blockchain market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, road traffic noise pollution still represents a considerable problem in Europe despite the efforts gathered by the scientific community, local authorities, and policymakers to tackle this issue. Research mostly focused on the development of Road Traffic Noise Models (RTNMs) and Noise Emission Models (NEMs) to forecast respectively traffic noise levels in terms of equivalent continuous sound levels and single-vehicle noise emissions in terms of sound power level. However, although the validity of such models was demonstrated in the literature, most of them are not able to deeply characterize the source in terms of motorization, engaged gear, and in idling conditions (i.e., a vehicle stopped in neutral gear with the engine running). Therefore, in this paper, an approach (based on standards and regulations) to obtain noise emission curves as a function of speed, motorization, and engaged gear, and a mathematical relationship between the sound pressure level (measured at the exhaust tube pipe) and the engine Revolution Per Minute (RPM) will be presented. Both methods are based on regressions (non-linear and linear, respectively). Two probe vehicles with different motorization (one diesel and one bi-fuel) were adopted to this end. Results showed that there exists a variability among the noise emission curves based on motorization information and engaged gear (at low speeds for manual transmission vehicles). Moreover, exhaust noise emissions, which are a function of motorization, linearly depend on RPM. All the obtained regressions are characterized by high determination coefficients (above 0.9) confirming the goodness of the presented approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial medium and heavy-duty diesel vehicles in Europe are responsible for transporting an average of 73% of the total freight tonnage over distances up to 150 km as of 2021. These vehicles often operate on routes where no other form of transport is viable while still assuring fast deliveries. However, due to the nature of the journeys performed by the heavy-duty vehicles, which can span over several days or weeks depending on the mileage and the loading and unloading destinations, it becomes essential for the drivers to address the energy demands for heating and for the cabin accessory appliances during resting periods. As a rule, and especially in cold weather conditions, in order to prevent start-up problems, engine idling has traditionally been used. In order to mitigate the negative impact of increased fuel consumption and cut the harmful emissions from the engine's idling, the usage of a fuel cell auxiliary power unit (APU) is proposed. Fuel cells are more efficient than internal combustion engines and as an APU they could be sized appropriately to specifically power the cabin's accessories. There are two types of fuel cells that are applied for an APU in heavy-duty vehicles, namely, proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), each one imposing specific system topology requirements. A brief literary review on fuel cell APUs for heavy-duty vehicles is undertaken in the paper with emphasis being on the most recent advancements and on the advantages and disadvantages for the two possible systems. An estimation of the cabin power consumption during rest periods for European heavy-duty vehicles is presented. Some general suggestions and considerations are laid down, which may be of use when designing such a system, as there is not much information on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical properties of atmospheric aerosols, such as aerosol optical depth (AOD), are determined from solar radiation measurements using filter radiometers, known in such measurement applications as sun photometers. Here we present calibration of filter radiometers from the European branches of aerosol monitoring networks AERONET, GAW-PFR, and SKYNET with respect to their spectral irradiance responsivities. The calibrations were carried out at PTB within the framework of the EMPIR project 19ENV04 MAPP "Metrology for aerosol optical properties" using the tunable laser-based setup, TUable Lasers In Photometry (TULIP). The realization of the spectral responsivity measurements of the filter radiometers at the TULIP setup, results, uncertainty contributions and implications are discussed in this conference paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is the most prevailing mental health problem nowadays and researchers expect it to deepen especially in most developed countries due to constantly aging population. This development would pose extreme financial burden on public finance. The SHARE project provides a huge variety of data sets including a mental health module used to form the 12-item EURO-D scale, which serves as a common metrics for depressions. However, in wave 7 this module includes respondents from only 12 countries. Consequently, this paper aims to construct data-driven indices reflecting the level of depression in Europe. We employ factor analysis and as a result, we derive two latent variables. High positive values of the first one indicate lack of depression, while high positive values of the second variable might be indicative for presence of serious depressive symptoms. We then inspect cross-national differences in terms of these two latent variables. Our major findings suggest that geographic location tends to have some effect on the presence of depressive symptoms among elderly people in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging population across developed countries is a problem that no nation has faced before. It puts severe financial burden on every public budget. Non-financial burdens are also common. Depression turns out to be the most common mental disease. Studying the features, that could boost the exhibition of depressive symptoms, and those, that could protect individuals from them, would have significant effect on the precision of public health policies. That is the aim of the paper. We base our research on wave 7 data of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe that for the first time summarizes information about 27 European countries and Israel. As a preliminary step in our analysis, we construct two latent variables used to quantify the level of depression. On the basis of extensive literature review, we identify a long list of potential features and apply lasso regression so as to select those of them that contribute most in explaining the variance of each of the latent variables. Delivered results indicate that among the most common features, leading to poor mental health, are working conditions, self-perceived health and the presence of functional limitations. On the other hand, educational attendance, lack of chronic diseases and sport activities are among the factors that protect from exhibiting depression symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The blast furnace slags are a by-product of the production process of cast iron, during which large amounts of liquid slags are formed. The composition of the blast furnace slags depends on the actual quality and proportion of the minerals and fluxes present in the blast furnace charge. Every year the steel industry in Europe produces 2900 tons of slags that, if left untreated, represent an industrial waste to be sent to landfills with serious environmental impact. In the RESLAG (Turning waste from steel industry into valuable low cost feedstock for energy intensive industry) project, the use of waste products deriving from iron and steel plants as new feedstock in different fields is considered: recovery of precious metals, thermal energy storage systems for steel-making and CSP industry, production of innovative refractory ceramic compounds. Within this framework, ENEA is investigating the possibility of using pebbles made with slags produced by the steel industry as a filler in high-temperature packed-bed thermocline TES systems, using a binary mixture of molten salts (60% NaNO3 40% KNO3) as HTF. More specifically, the pebbles are obtained by processing and sintering Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) slags produced during the manufacture of crude steel. Here, the lessons learned and the first experimental results collected during the commissioning phases of the PBTTES pilot plant developed within the RESLAG project are reported. In particular, the paper firstly reports about a preliminary set of tests carried out to check the chemical compatibility of the slags with the molten salts. Subsequently, the pilot plant is described and the results of the first commissioning tests, which were aimed at flooding the packed-bed with molten salts and checking the installed instrumentation, are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since timber frame constructions can help to reduce CO2-emissions and lower the embodied energy of buildings, the market share of timber-based buildings is growing across Europe. Unfortunately, timber frame constructions are found to be more susceptible to moisture damage, such as interstitial condensation, mould growth and wood rot. To avoid moisture damage, a correct design of the wall composition is crucial, with special emphasis on the relation between vapour resistance of wind and vapour barrier. Given that experimental investigations are time-consuming and expensive, numerical tools are common to assess the hygrothermal behaviour of building components. And although timber frame constructions are inherently two- or even three-dimensional due to the embedded wooden elements, most often, 1D-simulations focusing on the basic configuration with insulation between wind and vapour barrier are conducted. This paper investigates to what extent neglecting the embedded wooden elements influences the risk assessment of the wall. Three different wall configurations have been considered and their hygrothermal response, as predicted by 1D- and 2D-numerical simulations, are compared. Variability of the exterior climate is included by using two distinct different climate regions. Contrary to common assumptions, buffering of moisture in wooden elements does not always lower the risk on moisture damage, but might even increase it. While the predicted risk on mould growth was found to be similar between 1D and 2D-simulations, the opposite was found for the risk on interstitial condensation. Mainly for cold climates and wall configurations with hardly any other hygric buffering capacity, levels of interstitial condensation were found to be significantly higher when taking the wooden elements into account in the numerical simulations. Hence, care should be taken when assessing the reliability of timber frame walls based on 1D-simulations only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, to decrease greenhouse gas emissions as a part of climate change mitigation strategies, adoption of passive house approach, which is amongst the most prominent due to high energy efficiency potential, has gained momentum especially in Europe. On the other hand, global warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C is expected to be exceeded during the 21st century and this opens a debate on the summer thermal performance of passive houses. Architects, as main actors of the design process, play a significant role for the early assessment of potentials and risks regarding the building performance. Nevertheless, the use of performance assessments in design workflows is not main stream among architects yet. At this point, for architects to be able to include performance evaluations in their workflows, simplified performance assessment methods and building performance simulation tools integrated with design tools become more significant. In this regard, this study presents a simplified thermal performance evaluation method through a systematic performance simulation in early design phase. To meet the indoor thermal comfort expectations, temperature is one of the key parameters in building design and intensively correlated with the carbon footprint in the use phase. Therefore, thermal comfort is selected as the main performance topic, and a simplified method, namely annual neutral hours, which refers to the capacity of a building to run without active heating and cooling, is presented. In this scope, the paper discusses summer thermal comfort and climate change over a residential building case study by using a Building Performance Simulation tool integrated into a 3D CAD design tool. The results indicate that the proposed methods are applicable to early design workflows and have a potential to give insight to architects by enabling quick and iterative evaluations for the detection of key parameters; thus, solution alternatives. As an additional result of the study, among other parameters, transparent envelope properties and shading elements appear to be significant to meet the expectations for future summer thermal comfort; also, it is seen that the winter performance might slightly benefit from the climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green roof is an example of increasing the water retention in the urban areas and reduction of urban heat islands. The impact of green roofs and its influence on the thermal resistance or its change during the winter is often not taken into account in the contrary to the summer benefits. The surface of a highly insulated flat roof is overcooled during the night by the long wave sky radiation. This radiative cooling increases the thermal losses. This is reduced by the existence of additional green roof layers. Also, these green roof composition layers have their thermal resistance, which is usually not included within the calculation of thermal resistance using the EN ISO 6946. The thermal conductance of these layers is influenced by the water content, which is mostly higher than design values and hard to obtain. Also, the presence of snow in various forms on the roof can increase the resistance. In this paper, temperature courses during the winter season of the green roof, flat roof with gravel and the regular flat roof, based on the experimental measurement are analyzed. In this case, the use of green roof kept the temperature of the membrane almost constant near 0 °C during winter without correlation to the outdoor air temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proper indoor air quality and thermal comfort are part of the healthy indoor environment. The tests performed in the public utility, intelligent building „Energies" of Kielce University of Technology (Poland) with a group of students are the focus of the paper. The anonymous questionnaire survey was used to determine their thermal sensations, preferences and acceptability before the lecture and after it. In the meantime CO2 level, air and globe temperatures, relative humidity and air velocity were measured with the Testo 400 microclimate meter. The comparison of the changing air parameters throughout the time of 1.2h with the questionnaire survey provides information on the possibility of providing high thermal comfort and indoor air quality in the intelligent buildings, which are still quite rare in Central Europe. Consequently, obtaining experimental data there is valuable and important. It turned out that the building did not provide good quality parameters during the study, because the people felt too warm or hot in the room and wanted to change the temperature to a much cooler environment. What is more, the assessment of air quality according to the students at the beginning of classes at relatively low CO2 contents turns out to be an interesting phenomenon, where 36% of students subjectively assessed it in their questionnaires as being unacceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonized power generation and is one of the few dispatchable renewable technologies able to generate renewable electricity on demand. Today (2018) CSP contributes only 5TWh to the European power generation, but it has the potential to become one of the key pillars for European decarbonization pathways. In this paper we investigate how factors and pivotal policy decisions leading to different futures and associated CSP deployment in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step we characterize the scenarios with their associated system cost and the costs of support policies. We show that the role of CSP in Europe critically depends on political developments and the success or failure of policies outside renewable power. In particular, the uptake of CSP depends on the overall decarbonization ambition, the degree of cross border trade of renewable electricity and is enabled by the presence of strong grid interconnection between Southern and Norther European Member States as well as by future electricity demand growth. The presence of other baseload technologies, prominently nuclear power in France, reduce the role and need for CSP. Assuming favorable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modeled scenarios: contributing between 100TWh to 300TWh of electricity to a future European power system. This would require increasing the current European CSP fleet by a factor of 20 to 60 in the next 30 years. To achieve this financial support between € 0.4-2 billion per year into CSP would be needed, representing only a small share of overall support needs for power-system transformation. Cooperation of Member States could further help to reduce this cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present, acoustic load influencing human health and well-being is increasingly growing. Deterioration of environment by high acoustic load is evident especially in urban areas with heavy traffic, industrial areas or near to the airports. Therefore, it is among others important to improve acoustic properties of building materials in order to ensure good conditions for living in areas close to the sources of acoustic noise. The very first necessary step of such enhancement lies in identification of materials acoustic properties and successive modeling of materials behavior under the defined acoustic load. High acoustic attenuation of construction elements is typically achieved by high amount of pores present in material matrix and can be further improved by convenient volumetric content and geometry of incorporated voids that are optionally filled up by bulk materials in order to scatter and attenuate acoustic waves. Brick is a very popular and therefore widely used building material in Central Europe. Therefore, its acoustic properties needs to be experimentally identified or predicted by a convenient model. Within the paper, acoustic measurements conducted on brick are presented and an example of acoustic modeling based on the Lame’s equation with respect to the experimentally determined data used as input variables of the model is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Black-Scholes proposed a model for pricing European Options in 1973, Cox, Ross and Rubinstein in 1979, and Heston in 1993, showed that the constant volatility assumption made by Black-Scholes was one of the main reasons for the model to be unable to capture some market details. Instead of constant volatilities, they introduced stochastic volatilities to the asset dynamic modeling. In 2009, Christoffersen empirically showed "why multifactor stochastic volatility models work so well". Four years later, Chiarella and Ziveyi solved the model proposed by Christoffersen. They considered an underlying asset whose price is governed by two factor stochastic volatilities of mean reversion type. Applying Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms and the method of characteristics they presented a semi-analytical formula to compute an approximate price for American options. The huge calculation involved in the Chiarella and Ziveyi approach motivated the authors of this paper in 2014 to investigate another methodology to compute European Option prices on a Christoffersen type model. Using the first and second order asymptotic expansion method we presented a closed form solution for European option, and provided experimental and numerical studies on investigating the accuracy of the approximation formulae given by the first order asymptotic expansion. In the present paper we will perform experimental and numerical studies for the second order asymptotic expansion and compare the obtained results with results presented by Chiarella and Ziveyi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superconducting tokamak JT-60SA is part of the Broader Approach Programmeagreed between Japan and Europe. CEA is in charge of the cryogenic system procurementincluding the Warm Compression Station, the gas storages, the Refrigerator Cold Box andthe Auxiliary Cold Box (ACB) which has to be installed on the JAEA Naka site in 2016.This paper summarizes the updated cryogenic requirements for the tokamak JT-60SAcryogenic system. The cryogenic system has a refrigeration capacity of about 9 kW equivalent at 4.5K, to supply cryopump panels at 3.7 K, superconducting magnets and cold structures at 4.4 K, HTS current leads at 50 K, and thermal shields at 80 K. This paper presents the static and variable heat loads of the different cooling loops and the results of the rmohydraulic calculations to derive the transient heat loads at the interface between the magnet system cooling loops and the Auxiliary Cold Box. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common presentation of the widely known and accepted Black-Scholes European option pricing model explicitly imposes some restrictions such as the geometric Brownian motion assumption for the underlying stock price. In this paper, these usual restrictions are relaxed using maximum entropy principle of information theory, Pearson’s distribution system, market frictionless and risk-neutrality theories to the calculation of a unique risk-neutral probability measure calibrated with market parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COST (Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) is an important instrument supporting co-operation among scientists and researchers across Europe now joining 35 member countries. Scientific projects in the COST framework are called COST Actions and have the objectives embodied in their respective Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The main objectives of the COST Actions within the European ionospheric and radio propagation community have been: to study the influence of upper atmospheric conditions on terrestrial and Earth-space communications, to develop methods and techniques to improve existing and generate new ionospheric and propagation models over Europe for telecommunication and navigation applications and to transfer the results to the appropriate national and international organizations, institutions and industry dealing with the modern communication systems. This paper summarizes in brief the background and historical context of four ionospheric COST Actions and outlines their main objectives and results. In addition, the paper discusses the dissemination of the results and the collaboration among the participating institutions and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and political changes in Eastern and Central Europe resulted in the adoption of market capitalism typical of evaluation of material accumulation with lacking concern about environment in which and thank to which economic activities can take place. Fortunately, the attitude toward ecologic issues has been improving even if the institutional background is not ideal. Performing Data Envelopment Analysis the paper evaluates to what extent the EU countries are efficient in reaching both environmental and economic goals within their institutional frameworks. Moreover, policy recommendations related to the improvement of current state situation are formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with two different application of the data envelopment analysis models in health care. Data envelopment analysis is a linear programming method that is used to measure the efficiency of production units. Production units has inputs and outputs. The goal of this article is to measure efficiency countries of European region in the health care policy. In this paper the first input is the share of the gross domestic product with are given to health care and the second input is the number of people employed in the health care per 1000 inhabitants. The output is the average length of live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies a distribution of migrants coming to Europe within present refugee crisis. It employs the method of simulation, precisely, the phenomenological theory of diffusion and gravity model employed in urban geography. After 2011 the movement of migrants was affected by building fences, negotiations of readmission agreements, instability in Libya, etc. Therefore we employ statistical data from the previous period. The diffusion of people was studied as one-dimensional transport at the solid surface without activation energy. Solutions of 2nd Fick's law applied in semiconductor technology were adapted to show that in the future, especially due to climate change, the immigration to Europe may follow diffusion from a constant (infinite) source and it may overflow the continent. The diffusion coefficient characterizing the movement of people [km²/day] is been introduced. Simplified gravity model approach was used to find which factors, like gross domestic product, population of the country and their variations and combinations attract the migrants. A better quantification of migration phenomena in the future would need more reliable statistical data in much higher quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key step of European Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation is the ecological status classification and the achievement of good water statuses for all waters, by 2015. In transitional waters, the changing environmental niche induces responses in the macroinvertebrate guilds and macroinvertebrate responses induce uncertainty in the metrics. In this case, the sources of uncertainty in the ecological classification with benthic macroinvertebrates, is addressed by focusing on two major potential sources: spatial heterogeneity and temporal heterogeneity. A coherent study of the series of correlation between the physics and chemistry parameters is needed in order to succeed in reaching a complete picture. In this paper we present a bi-dimensional regression analysis model dependence of chemistry component by two independent environment variables-temperature and pH. The consistent experimental data set and the regression computation approach lead to a series of interesting outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European aircraft industry demands for reduced development and operating costs. Structural weight reduction by exploitation of structural reserves in composite aerospace structures contributes to this aim, however, it requires accurate and experimentally validated stability analysis of real structures under realistic loading conditions. This paper presents different advances from the area of computational stability analysis of composite aerospace structures which contribute to that field. For stringer stiffened panels main results of the finished EU project COCOMAT are given. It investigated the exploitation of reserves in primary fibre composite fuselage structures through an accurate and reliable simulation of postbuckling and collapse. For unstiffened cylindrical composite shells a proposal for a new design method is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global increased of market integration for the past few decades has been staggering. Although numerous research have shown market integration as one of the main drivers of economic growth, existing literature has yet to find a conclusive result. Hence, this study examines the impact of stock market integration on economic growth in 32 countries of Asia and Europe regions. The study utilizes the Kalman Filter method to generate the stock market integration index and heterogenous panel models to investigate its relationship towards economic growth. Overall, the result shows that stock market integration has positive impact on economic growth in Asia and Europe high-income countries. However, the impact is not significant in Asia Middle-Income Countries, which suggest the insufficient absorptive capacities in these countries to benefit from the market integration. Such findings call for more appropriate market liberalization policies that fits the economic environment and geographical location of these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses perspectives for a future fixed-target electron-nucleon scattering facility in Europe. Based on the intended measurements the requirements on accelerator, target and spectrometer are presented and their possible realisation is discussed. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper, we studied the rich strategic and information-revelation considerations arising in simple guessing game which is very popular in some European countries: the so-called Chinos game. Here, we complement that analysis with a preliminary study of the learning dynamics induced when players no longer can assume that others play according to fixed (possibly equilibrium) rules but, instead, have to use past evidence to understand or interpret their opponent's behavior. We show that if all players are flexible learners, they will eventually succeed in playing according to the unique Nash equilibrium of the game. This outcome, however, is also found to be rather fragile: if only one player (say, a "noise agent") is unable or unwilling to learn, this wrecks havoc in the overall population dynamics. In that case, this dynamics never settles and a complex cyclical pattern typically ensues. The implications of this conclusion for the study of information-revelation mechanisms in the real world (e.g. asset markets) is quite apparent but yet to be tackled in full detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-Speed Railways (HSR) is currently regarded as one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in passenger transportation developed in the second half of the 20th century. At the beginning of 2008, there were about 10,000 kilometers of new high-speed lines in operation in Asia and Europe regions to provide high-speed services to passengers willing to pay for lower travel time and quality improvement in rail transport. And since 2010, HSR itself has received a great deal of attention in Indonesia. Some transportation analysts contend that Indonesia, particularly Java and Sumatera islands need a high-speed rail network to be economically competitive with countries in Asia and Europe. On April 2016, Indonesia-China consortium Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC) signed an engineering, procurement, and construction contract to build the HSR with a consortium of seven companies called the High-Speed Railway Contractor Consortium. The HSR is expected to debut by May 2019, offering a 45-minute trip covering a roughly 150 km route. However, building, maintaining and operating HSR line is expensive; it involves a significant amount of sunk costs and may substantially compromise both the transport policy of a country and the development of its transport sector for decades. The main objective of this paper is to discuss some characteristics of the HSR services from an economic viewpoint, while simultaneously developing an empirical framework that should help us to understand, in more detail, the factors determining the success of the HSR as transport alternative based on current experiences of selected Asian and European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing evidence that variability associated with the 11-year solar cycle has an impact at the Earth's surface and influences its weather and climate. Although the direct response to the Sun's variability is extremely small, a number of different mechanisms have been suggested that could amplify the signal, resulting in regional signals that are much larger than expected. In this paper the observed solar cycle signal at the Earth's surface is described, together with proposed mechanisms that involve modulation via the total incoming solar irradiance and via modulation of the ultraviolet part of the solar spectrum that influences ozone production in the stratosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on the results from our recent research on multidimensional option pricing problems. We focus on European option valuation when the price movement of the underlying asset is driven by a stochastic volatility following a square root process proposed by Heston. The stochastic approach incorporates a new additional spatial variable into this model and makes it very robust, i.e. it provides a framework to price a variety of options that is closer to reality. The main topic is to present the numerical scheme arising from the concept of discontinuous Galerkin methods and applicable to the Heston option pricing model. The numerical results are presented on artificial benchmarks as well as on reference market data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austria’s geographical position in Europe makes it an interesting mixture of concepts in various ways. It is a country with a longstanding scientific and research culture and a number of famous physicists in its history. A number of Austrian women have also shined and produced great contributions to the development of physics. This means that female role models in physics exist for this nation, and their success could potentially inspire the new generation of female physicists, but this has not been fully exploited yet. Changes have certainly been observed in the last two decades, and women are more often seen in leading positions in physics, yet old boys networks have an effect on the promotion of women’s careers in this scientific area. Also, popular beliefs about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers (physics in particular) still impose an invisible barrier for society to help more women pursue this career path. This paper presents an overview of the numbers related to the presence of women at all career stages in physics in Austria distributed among universities. Also, a report on initiatives that have taken place at the University of Vienna as an example is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since about a decade the european physics community interested in neutrino and neutrino-astrophysics develops a plan to conceive the next generation large underground neutrino observatory. Recently, the LAGUNA-LBNO collaboration made the outcome of the FP7 design study public which shows a clear path for the realization of such experiment. In this paper the LAGUNA and LAGUNA-LBNO Design studies, resulting in a proposal for the LBNO experiment, will be discussed. The author will focus on the long baseline neutrino oscillation search, especially on the potential to discover the neutrino mass ordering and the search for CP violation in the lepton sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observations of aurora borealis at low latitudes are rare, and are clearly associated with high solar activity. In this paper, we analyze some details of the solar activity during the years 1769-1792. Moreover, we describe in detail three low latitude auroras. The first event was reported by ash-Shalātī and observed in North Africa (1770 AD). The second and third events were reported by l'Abbé Mann and observed in Europe (1770 and 1777 AD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus is one of massive transportation vehicle that play crucial role for Indonesian people mobility. A fuel consumption was increased by increasing the number of buses since most of buses still using combustion engine with hydro carbon fuel. It caused the reducing of fuel reserves in the earth. Therefore, it is compulsory to make an effort to reduce the consumption of hydro carbon fuel. One of them is to change the engine of buses by electrical motor which is applied on electric bus. The changing of buses engine from combustion to electric motor resulted the increasing the weight of bus due to the high weight of electric motor and its auxiliaries’ components. The weight must be reduced by using the lighter material. The frame of bus with light material must be examined regarding its performance during the rolling accident since this accident was categorized as a highly fatal accident. UN ECE R66 is a standard that was applied in Europe countries to measure the level of security of bus during the rolling accident. This paper aims to simulate the performances of electric frame’s bus with three materials during the rolling accident using Finite Element Method (FEM). The result of simulation of three materials than were compared to get the material with the best performance. Based on the comparison result, Aluminum 6061 T6 was proposed as a material of electric bus frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European policy on reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be particularly supported by Electric Vehicles’ market penetration in the following years. This paper overviews the so far penetration of the Electric Vehicles Technology in Europe and at the same time aims to provide an estimation about the future penetration based on appropriate prognostic tools. For this reason, the authors analyze the so far statistical data of the Electric Vehicles sales and use both the linear regression and Brown method to estimate their foreseen market penetration within the next decades. The results of this study can provide an insight about the future of Electric Vehicles penetration and their potential contribution in climate change mitigation and ancillary services to the grid. This study results, foresee that CO2 emissions reduction lie between 5% and 9, 53% by the year 2030 compared to the base year 2017. These results imply that further policy measures and incentives need to be given for supporting Electric Vehicles further in the next years to follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent collapse on 14/08/2008 of the Morandi bridge in Genoa highlighted the need for continuous monitoring and restoration of strategic works, with reference also to the new DM 2018, to European and world standards. This paper presents a new monitoring system for maintenance planning of highway bridges. The system includes functions for maintenance priorities for action in the roads. The highway system in Europe and North America countries presents existing bridges which are considered to be deficient and must be repaired or upgraded in the time. The funds available for the maintenance of existing bridges are extremely limited when compared with the huge investment necessary, and must, therefore, be spent wisely. The monitoring of existing bridges is important to define the surgical priority but especially to define the best correct structural details for the design. The natural erosion of the security’s infrastructures is becoming important for the maintenance cost of the bridge and is necessary a code to define the correct monitoring. The inspection permits to define the common defects, but is important to define a method to identify localized defects and eventually any indication of failure by collapse. A new system of visual inspections, the I-E method, is here presented to define the security level of the infrastructures and to determine a better design too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic principle of the photodynamic effect was discovered over a hundred years ago leading to the pioneering work on PDT in Europe. It was only during the 1980s, however, when "photoradiation therapy" was investigated as a possible treatment modality for cancer. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a photochemotherapeutic process which requires the use of a photosensitizer (PS) that, upon entry into a cancer cell is targeted by laser irradiation to initiate a series of events that contribute to cell death. PSs are light-sensitive dyes activated by a light source at a specific wavelength and can be classified as first or second generation PSs based on its origin and synthetic pathway. The principle of PS activation lies in a photochemical reaction resulting from excitation of the PS producing singlet oxygen which in turn reacts and damages cell organelles and biomolecules required for cell function and ultimately leading to cell destruction. Several first and second generation PSs have been studied in several different cancer types in the quest to optimize treatment. PSs including haematoporphyrin derivative (HpD), aminolevulinic acid (ALA), chlorins, bacteriochlorins, phthalocyanines, naphthalocyanines, pheophorbiedes and purpurins all require selective uptake and retention by cancer cells prior to activation by a light source and subsequent cell death induction. Photodynamic diagnosis (PDD) is based on the fluorescence effect exhibited by PSs upon irradiation and is often used concurrently with PDT to detect and locate tumours. Both laser and light emitting diodes (LED) have been used for PDT depending on the location of the tumour. Internal cancers more often require the use of laser light delivery using fibre optics as delivery system while external PDT often make use of LEDs. Normal cells have a lower uptake of the PS in comparison to tumour cells, however the acute cytotoxic effect of the compound on the recovery rate of normal cells is not known. Subcellular localization of PS is of vital importance when cell death mechanism is identified. Programmed cell death (PCD) viz. apoptosis, necrosis and autophagy have all been identified as inducible cell death mechanisms during PDT. While apoptosis is probably the preferred cell death mechanism, understanding the molecular differences and identifying the cross-talk between these mechanisms are crucial to the development of new PSs aimed at improving the killing efficiency and overall effectiveness of PDT as a cancer treatment modality. This paper reviews the process of PDT cancer therapy, the available PSs, their effectiveness for different cancers as well as the cell death mechanisms identified during PDT of different cancers associated with specific PSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine dust, especially those fractions below 10 and 2.5 microns can cause serious heart and respiratory disease and stringently requires effective pollutant standards and methods for their reduction. Therefore stricter immission European Union regulations [1, 2] were recently established, in order to improve the fine dust situation of the ambient air in Europe. Nowadays among different technical separation devices, filtering, regenerateable dust separators are the most suitable ones to meet very low dust emission concentrations of industrial exhaust gases. But the disadvantage of this separator is the relative high pressure drop and sometimes a premature filter media clogging, which requires its costly replacement. In order to minimise this disadvantage, suitable design and standard laboratory test methods are in use. E.g. in Europe a German guideline (VDI 3926) [2] exists, by which in laboratory test runs optimal filter media can be evaluated. The problem is that within these test methods a so called aging procedure is included. The clogging behaviour of the aging procedure was basically investigated in this paper and a new test procedure for comparing different filter media with respect to the aging was developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an update on the Atomic Data and Analysis Structure, ADAS, since ICAM-DATA06 and a forward look to its evolution in the next five years. ADAS is an international project supporting principally magnetic confinement fusion research. It has participant laboratories throughout the world, including ITER and all its partner countries. In parallel with ADAS, the ADAS-EU Project provides enhanced support for fusion research at Associated Laboratories and Universities in Europe and ITER. OPEN-ADAS, sponsored jointly by the ADAS Project and IAEA, is the mechanism for open access to principal ADAS atomic data classes and facilitating software for their use. EXTENDED-ADAS comprises a variety of special, integrated application software, beyond the purely atomic bounds of ADAS, tuned closely to specific diagnostic analyses and plasma models. The current scientific content and scope of these various ADAS and ADAS related activities are briefly reviewed. These span a number of themes including heavy element spectroscopy and models, charge exchange spectroscopy, beam emission spectroscopy and special features which provide a broad baseline of atomic modelling and support. Emphasis will be placed on 'lifting the fundamental data baseline'-a principal ADAS task for the next few years. This will include discussion of ADAS and ADAS-EU coordinated and shared activities and some of the methods being exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows examples and results of cooperation ITAS has had with institutions in Central and Eastern Europe concerning sustainable development as well as information society knowledge transfer. Presented are necessities, possibilities and experiences regarding mutual knowledge transfer. The starting points in this matter are the integrative concept of sustainability as well as the concept of knowledge resp. information society, both developed by ITAS. Primarily, in this context the particular cultural dimension is clarified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The naturally occurring radionuclides radium (Ra-226) and polonium (Po-210) have the potential to be used for criminal acts. Analysis of international incident data contained in the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft and Orphan Radiation Sources (CSTO), operated at the University of Salzburg, shows that several acts of murder and terrorism with natural radionuclides have already been carried out in Europe and Russia. Five different modes of attack (T) are possible: (1) Covert irradiation of an individual in order to deliver a high individual dose; (2) Covert irradiation of a group of persons delivering a large collective dose; (3) Contamination of food or drink; (4) Generation of radioactive aerosols or solutions; (5) Combination of Ra-226 with conventional explosives (Dirty Bomb). This paper assesses the risk (R) of such criminal acts in terms of: (a) Probability of terrorist motivation deploying a certain attack mode T; (b) Probability of success by the terrorists for the selected attack mode T; (c) Primary damage consequence (C) to the attacked target (activity, dose); (d) Secondary damage consequence (C′) to the attacked target (psychological and socio-economic effects); (e) Probability that the consequences (C, C′) cannot be brought under control, resulting in a failure to manage successfully the emergency situation due to logistical and/or technical deficits in implementing adequate countermeasures. Extensive computer modelling is used to determine the potential impact of such a criminal attack on directly affected victims and on the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northwest Europe is a region in which damaging earthquakes exist. Assessing the risks of damages is useful, but this is not an easy work based on exact science. In this paper, we propose a general tool for a first level assessment of seismic risks (rapid diagnosis). General methodological aspects are presented. For a given building, the risk is represented by a volume in a multi-dimensional space. This space is defined by axes representing the main parameters that have an influence on the risk. We notably express the importance of including a parameter to consider the specific value of cultural heritage. Then we apply the proposed tool to analyze and compare methods of seismic risk assessment used in Belgium. They differ by the spatial scale of the studied area. Study cases for the whole Belgian Territory and for part of cities in Liège and Mons (Be) aim also to give some sense of the overall risk in Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-baseline experiments will play a crucial role in the precision era of neutrino oscillation physics. In this paper we review the ongoing European programme, which is focused on CNGS, and we discuss the opportunities for new facilities based on the CERN acceleration complex. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until last year the CERN Neutrino Factory Working Group has been quite active together with other European laboratories. The sudden discovery of the bad financial situation at CERN due to the LHC construction put an abrupt halt to these studies. Lots of CERN activities were cut back to allow for the finishing of LHC in time and without any significant global increase in CERN’s budget. Nevertheless with a new organisation and several committees and working groups, activity on a European scale is still going on. This paper describes the actual situation and some European ideas in the different areas which may turn out to be very relevant in the future. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last five years, there has been substantial international interest in a high luminosity (approx. 1033cm-2s-1) polarized electron-ion collider covering a CM energy range from about 30 to 100 GeV. Workshops have taken place in Europe in 1997 and in the United States at IUCF (1999), BNL (1999), Yale (2000) and MIT (2000). An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) collaboration was formed in the fall of 2000, and in the United States, the 2001 Long Range Plan favorably endorsed the science of EIC and urged R&D support as a high priority. In March 2002, a series of workshops at BNL involving over 150 physicists from around the world agreed to produce a conceptual design of an electron-ion collider within three years. Further, it was agreed to develop this design around the existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL. This design is known as eRHIC. In this paper the scientific highlights of eRHIC are described. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several static models for description of different waves of Covid-19 pandemic are considered, analyzed and compared. The best models relative to this pandemic (generalized fractional-power model and generalized inverse tangent model) are new. These and other non-symmetric models are user friendly and show a good agreement with the official data for the pandemic in Europe. The best models give less than 1% error for a 20-day prediction period and less than 1.5% error for a 40-day prediction period. Recommendations for the use of the models are made. The results obtained may be used in the analysis of possible new waves of Covid-19 in.different countries, in Europe and worldwide. Such waves seem more and more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]