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The maquiladora industry in Mexico especially in the north of the country represents an important source of employment and social security, therefore, this article addresses the question of what would happen if new technologies displaced workforce in this economical sector? The objective of this research is to determine the maturity level of Industry 4.0 in the electronic maquiladora of Mexicali, in Baja California and its possible repercussions on the employment for operators and engineers. To understand and know the nature of this phenomenon, a case study was carried out on five of the most important companies in the region, the methodology used was quantitative and qualitative. Three surveys were designed based on the research of the Sectorial Model Reference Industry 4.0 made by the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE) and the European Regional Development Fund and were applied to engineers in the department of investigation and development, operators, and to a Human Resources worker. In this regard was designed an interview that was applied to a key expert that gave us the point of view about the actual status of the developing of the industry 4.0 in the city of Mexicali. The overall conclusion is that the state of advancement of Industry 4.0 in the electronic maquiladora in Mexicali has an intermediate digital maturity (level 2-3), that is, in many cases the technology is known and used, but only by specific processes. Regarding the digital skills of engineers, it was found that they are highly trained to face the challenges of the new digital era, while the operator positions report a level of digital competence between low and medium, which places this profile of worker in a vulnerable situation for keep their position.

While life expectancy increases in developed countries and there is evidence that demon strates the potential of the internet to optimise or compensate for the losses associated with ageing, there is a high proportion of older people who continue to be disconnected from the digital world. In this scenario, the technological support offered by public insti tutions has the potential to be an accessible source for the digital literacy of older people. This study, using the model of digital inequality, had the aim of analysing the ability of these institutional supports to determine and predict the digital inclusion of older people. The sample was retired adults (over 54 years) residing in Spain who are users of techno logical support services in four organisational contexts: nursing homes, senior community centres, University Programs for Seniors and adult education programmes. Through bin ary logistic regression analysis, we found that the ability of the availability of literacy sup port to determine and predict access, autonomy, skills and use of the internet for social connectivity depends on the social and organisational context of the technology support service. These findings support empirically the situated nature of technological support for the digital inclusion of older people and provide a useful comparative vision for the design of accessible support services adapted to the needs of its users., This work was conducted within the framework of ‘Alfamed’ (Euro-American Network of Researchers), with the support of the R+D Project ‘Youtubers and Instagrammers: Media Competence in Emerging Prosumers’ (RTI2018-093303-B-I00), financed by the State Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the European Regional Development Fund.

Supervised machine learning is widely used in biology and deserves more scrutiny. We present a set of community-wide recommendations (DOME) aiming to help establish standards of supervised machine learning validation in biology. Formulated as questions, the DOME recommendations improve the assessment and reproducibility of papers when included as supplementary material. The work of the Machine Learning Focus Group was funded by ELIXIR, the research infrastructure for life-science data. IW was funded by the A*STAR Career Development Award (project no. C210112057) from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. D.F. was supported by Estonian Research Council grants (PRG1095, PSG59 and ERA-NET TRANSCAN-2 (BioEndoCar)); Project No 2014-2020.4.01.16-0271, ELIXIR and the European Regional Development Fund through EXCITE Center of Excellence. S.C.E.T. has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant agreements No. 778247 and No. 823886, and Italian Ministry of University and Research PRIN 2017 grant 2017483NH8. Peer Reviewed "Article signat per 8 autors més 28 autors/es de l' ELIXIR Machine Learning Focus Group: Emidio Capriotti, Rita Casadio, Salvador Capella-Gutierrez, Davide Cirillo, Alessio Del Conte, Alexandros C. Dimopoulos, Victoria Dominguez Del Angel, Joaquin Dopazo, Piero Fariselli, José Maria Fernández, Florian Huber, Anna Kreshuk, Tom Lenaerts, Pier Luigi Martelli, Arcadi Navarro, Pilib Ó Broin, Janet Piñero, Damiano Piovesan, Martin Reczko, Francesco Ronzano, Venkata Satagopam, Castrense Savojardo, Vojtech Spiwok, Marco Antonio Tangaro, Giacomo Tartari, David Salgado, Alfonso Valencia & Federico Zambelli"

One of the key challenges related to the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic is preservation of employment and protecting staff who are working in port operations and struggling to keep ports operating for ship calls. These activities performed by port labour are deemed to be crucial for the EU and European ports, since 75% of the EU external trade and 30% of intra-EU transport goods are moved by waterborne transport. As a response to the global lockdown and the vulnerability of global supply chains, the majority of international organisations and maritime ports networks have shortlisted measures necessary to keep the severe effects of the lockdown to a minimum. One of the key measures identified is how to limit physical interaction. As an effect, millions of people and organisations across the globe have had to use and/or increase their deployment of digital technologies, such as digital documentation, tracing information systems and digital group-working platforms. Hence, blockchain and data-enabling systems have become to be recognised as a core element maintaining the uninterrupted flow of goods and services at ports. In pursuing uninterrupted trade and keeping ports open and running, this research paper addresses how the current situation afflicts the small and medium-sized ports located on the Baltic Sea which are argued to be critical actors of the port-centric logistics’ ecosystem. Given the topicality of this research and addressing the research gap, the authors suggest a conceptual capacity-building framework for port employees. This suggested framework is based on empirical insights: primary and secondary data collected from the project Connect2SmallPorts, part-financed by the Interreg South Baltic Programme 2014–2020 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The conceptual framework aims towards a practical training programme dedicated to fill in the missing skills or expand the limited competence of human resources and ports’ capacity when adapting or advancing digitalisation in the ports’ ecosystems. In particular, specific areas of capacity building are addressed and individual solutions suggested to foster a digital transformation of ports. The conceptual training framework is designed as a training tool indicating opportunities to help ports upgrade their competences with the blockchain technology, and to advance their transportation, environmental and economic performance with improved digitalisation. For this purpose, the conducted research employed mixed methods and applied concepts and approaches based on the field of management. For example, the construct of absorptive capacity, organisational learning, transformation, resource-based view and the concept of dynamic capabilities are included in the ecosystem discourse and are linked with open innovation and service design. The research presented in this article provides both theoretical and practical contributions, in which the affected stakeholders can test and utilise the developed tool as well as transfer it to other regions.

To explore the role of chronic inflammation inherent to autoimmune diseases in the development of subclinical atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness, this study recruited two population-based samples of individuals with and without autoimmune disease (ratio 1:5) matched by age, sex, and education level and with a longstanding (≥6 years) diagnosis of autoimmune disease. Common carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and arterial distensibility and compliance were assessed with carotid ultrasound. Multivariable linear and logistic regression models were adjusted for 10-year cardiovascular risk. In total, 546 individuals with and without autoimmune diseases (91 and 455, respectively) were included. The mean age was 66 years (standard deviation 12), and 240 (43.9%) were women. Arterial stiffness did not differ according to the presence of autoimmune diseases. In men, the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases significantly increased common carotid IMT [beta-coefficient (95% confidence interval): 0.058 (0.009; 0.108); p value = 0.022] and the percentage with IMT ≥ 75th percentile [1.012 (0.145; 1.880); p value = 0.022]. Women without autoimmune disease were more likely to have IMT ≥ the 75th percentile [-2.181 (-4.214; -0.149); p value = 0.035], but the analysis of IMT as a continuous variable did not yield significant results. In conclusion, subclinical carotid atherosclerosis, but not arterial stiffness, was more common in men with autoimmune diseases. Women did not show significant differences in any of these carotid features. Sex was an effect modifier in the association between common carotid IMT values and the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases.

Regional Operational Programs are one of the instruments for implementing EU regional policy. In the 2014-2020 financial perspective, the funding of the Programs is provided from several sources. The aim of the article is to evaluate the financing structure of Regional Operational Programs in the context of expenditure of the public sector and economic entities, and to draw conclusions from the actual state of affairs in this aspect. The main source of ROP financing are European funds in the form of the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund. The obligatory part is the national contribution, and it is in this area that we can apply a more detailed breakdown. Within the national public funds, the funds of local government units have the largest share. It is within the budgets of local government units that the largest amounts have been secured to cover the national contribution. An important source of ROP financing are also private funds of economic entities which come from their own funds and credit obligations. The share of other sources of financing the domestic contribution is insignificant. The financing structure differs due to the thematic scope of the ROP priority axes.

The study also receives funding from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain (ISCIII, PI15/02019), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF–A Way to Build Europe) and the European Social Fund (ESF–Investing in Your Future). Dr. Cortes-Canteli was supported by a Miguel Servet type I research contract (ISCIII, CP16/00174 & MS16/00174) and the Fondo de Investigacion Sanitaria (ISCIII, PI17/00590 & PI20/00819). Dr. Toribio-Fernandez was supported by the Iniciativa de Empleo Juvenil of the Consejeria de Educacion, Juventud y Deporte de la Comunidad de Madrid (PEJD-2018-POST/BMD-9259). Ms. Tristao-Pereira was supported by a “la Caixa” Foundation fellowship (ID 100010434, LCF/BQ/DI19/11730052). Dr. Gispert is supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MCIN; RYC-2013-13054) and Dr. B. Ibanez by the European Research Council (ERC-2018-CoG 819775-MATRIX). The CNIC is supported by the ISCIII, the MCIN, and the Pro-CNIC Foundation. The BBRC is mainly funded by the “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) under agreement LCF/PR/GN17/50300004, the EU/EFPIA Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking EPAD under grant agreement 115736, and the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement 115952. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the EFPIA. Dr. Molinuevo has served as a consultant for, sat on advisory boards of, or delivered lectures in symposia sponsored by Roche Diagnostics, Genentech, Novartis, Lundbeck, Oryzon, Biogen, Lilly, Janssen, Green Valley, MSD, Eisai, Alector, BioCross, GE Healthcare, and ProMIS Neurosciences. Dr. Gispert has given lectures in symposia sponsored by General Electric, Philips, and Biogen. Dr. Sanchez-Gonzalez is a Philips employee. All other authors have reported that they have no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose.

The digitalisation process implies many benefits for its active participants. However, some companies, individuals and social groups are excluded from this process, which leads to digital inequalities. The aim of the article is to evaluate Polish regions (NUTS 2) in terms of their digital inclusion and to indicate the importance of EU funds in supporting digital inclusion in Poland. It is claimed that the role of external financial support from EU funds is important in promoting digital inclusion in Polish regions. Support for ICT development is becoming very important in Poland and its regions. In the perspective of 2014–2020, an operational programme dedicated to promoting the development and use of ICT was developed: Digital Poland 2014–2020 Operational Programme. Also within the framework of regional operational programmes implemented in the regions of Poland, including Silesia, priorities or undertakings related to the support for ICT development were identified. This requires the implementation of a wide range of projects, from the improvement of access to the Internet, through the improvement of accessibility and quality of public e-services, to further development of digital competences. Without prompt actions in this regard, the problem of digital exclusion in Poland and its regions will further intensify.

Research reported in this work was funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). This research was also supported by the European Union and the Hungarian State, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund in the framework of the GINOP-2.3.4-15-2016-00004 project, aimed to promote cooperation between higher education and industry.

[EN] Image-based and range-based solutions can be used for the acquisition of valuable data in medicine. However, most of these methods are not valid for non-static patients. Cranial deformation is a problem with high prevalence among infants and image-based solutions can be used to assess the degree of deformation and monitor the evolution of patients. However, it is required to deal with infants normal movement during the assessment in order to avoid sedation. Some high-end multiple-sensor image-based solutions allow the achievement of accurate 3D data for medical applications under unpredicted dynamic conditions in consultation. In this paper, a novel, single photogrammetric smartphone-based solution for cranial deformation assessment is presented. A coded cap is placed on the infant's head and a guided smartphone app is used by the user to acquire the information, that is later processed on a server to obtain the 3D model. The smartphone app is designed to guide users with no knowledge of photogrammetry, computer vision or 3D modelling. The processing is fully automatic offline. The photogrammetric tool is also non-invasive, reacting well with quick and sudden infant's movements. Therefore, it does not require sedation. This paper tackles the accuracy and repeatability analysis tested both for a single user (intrauser) and multiple non-expert user (interuser) on 3D printed head models. The results allow us to confirm an accuracy below 1.5 mm, which makes the system suitable for clinical practice by medical staff. The basic automatically-derived anthropometric linear magnitudes are also tested obtaining a mean variability of 0.6 +/- 0.6 mm for the longitudinal and transversal distances and 1.4 +/- 1.3 mm for the maximum perimeter., This project is funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III and European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), project number PI18/00881, and by Generalitat Valenciana, grant number ACIF/2017/056.

P. 441-451 Aim To evaluate the transferability between fire recurrence scenarios of post‐fire vegetation cover models calibrated with satellite imagery data at different spatial resolutions within two Mediterranean pine forest sites affected by large wildfires in 2012. Location The northwest and east of the Iberian Peninsula. Methods In each study site, we defined three fire recurrence scenarios for a reference period of 35 years. We used image texture derived from the surface reflectance channels of WorldView‐2 and Sentinel‐2 (at a spatial resolution of 2 m × 2 m and 20 m × 20 m, respectively) as predictors of post‐fire vegetation cover in Random Forest regression analysies. Percentage vegetation cover was sampled in two sets of field plots with a size roughly equivalent to the spatial resolution of the imagery. The plots were distributed following a stratified design according to fire recurrence scenarios. Model transferability was assessed within each study site by applying the vegetation cover model developed for a given fire recurrence scenario to predict vegetation cover in other scenarios, iteratively. Results For both wildfires, the highest model transferability between fire recurrence scenarios was achieved for those holding the most similar vegetation community composition regarding the balance of species abundance according to their plant‐regenerative traits (root mean square error [RMSE] around or lower than 15%). Model transferability performance was highly improved by fine‐grained remote‐sensing data. Conclusions Fire recurrence is a major driver of community structure and composition so the framework proposed in this study would allow land managers to reduce efforts in the context of post‐fire decision‐making to assess vegetation recovery within large burned landscapes with fire regime variability. SI

[EN] This article covers the inventory management of healthcare supplies problem. Based on the mathematical programming model set out by [1], a causal model and a flow chart were developed to outline the simulation model, which was to be later applied to a highly specialized medical institution that performs high-risk heart surgery, such as catheterizations and angioplasties. With this simulation model, a purchases plan with 21 healthcare supplies was obtained that contemplates all the problem¿s restrictions: purchasing policy (safety stock, available budget); the warehouse¿s physical reality (warehouse capacity); characteristics of supplies (useful life, service level); and suppliers (price, capacity and size of lots or rounding value). Different indicators were also considered, such as service levels, costs of purchases, stockouts costs and inventory maintenance costs. The results obtained with the simulation model came very close to the mathematical programming results, but the computing times were considerably shorter., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities project entitled 'Optimisation of zero-defects production technologies enabling supply chains 4.0 (CADS4.0)' (RTI2018-101344-B-I00) and the Operational Program of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the Valencian Community 2014-2020 IDIFEDER/2018/025.

The HELENA Study was supported by contract FOOD-CT-2005-007034 from the European Community Sixth RTD Framework Programme. The study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU16/02127, FPU13/03410), by Redes Tematicas de Investigacion Cooperativa RETIC grant (Red SAMID RD16/0022), by the University of Granada Plan Propio de Investigacion 2016 (Excellence actions: Unit of Excellence on Exercise and Health [UCEES]), by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), by the Junta de Andalucia, Consejeria de Conocimiento, Investigacion y Universidades (ref. SOMM17/6107/UGR).

Electric field (EF) variables and electrode material are fundamental factors in ohmic heating (OH) processing. In this study, stainless steel, titanium and graphite were used as electrodes in conventional and OH (at 50 Hz and 20 kHz) treatments of whey protein isolate solutions at pH 3 and pH 7. The treated solutions were characterized in terms of UV absorbance, changes in intrinsic fluorescence, binding of a conformational probe and secondary structure (evaluated by circular dichroism). Differentiated structural features were induced by the different treatment conditions and were more evident at pH 7 and OH at 50 Hz. The metal leakage (quantified with ICP-MS) from the electrodes revealed to influence the equilibrium of early stages of protein aggregation, with stainless steel demonstrating to be the most electro-active material followed by titanium and finally graphite (that did not release metal). These findings highlight that structural properties of whey proteins may not only be influenced by the EF action but also by the leakage of metals from the electrodes. Industrial relevance OH is a recognized emerging processing technology and has a recognized potential to control and enhance protein functionality due its ability to influence protein structural features. Both electrode stability and protein structural changes are related with the EF operational parameters such as voltage, current or frequency. These parameters are decisive in the occurrence and extension of electrochemical phenomena and in the EF action mechanisms over protein structure. The confirmation of EF non-thermal effects at high and low frequencies (independently of the electrochemical phenomena) dissipated previous doubts regarding its effectiveness to modulate protein functionality. The understanding of the electrode material stability and influence of different electric parameters on the product's functionality, stability and safety are fundamental to design OH devices and to the establishment of operational protocols. The stability and material release from the electrodes is a fundamental factor during OH processing, imposing serious implications in equipment costs, maintenance, as well as in product quality and safety. This study highlights the influence of different electrode materials during OH at different electrical frequencies and its impacts on protein structural aspects., This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/ BIO/04469/2019 and UID/QUI/50006/2019 with funding from FCT/ MCTES through national funds, BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01- 0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Ricardo N. Pereira acknowledge FCT for its Assistant Research contract obtained under CEEC Individual 2017., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This work describes the development of a capacitive-type sensor created from nanoporous anodic aluminium oxide (NP-AAO) prepared by the one-step anodization method conducted in potentiostatic mode and performed in a low-cost homemade system. A series of samples were prepared via an anodization campaign carried out on different acid electrolytes, in which the anodization parameters were adjusted to investigate the effect of pore size and porosity on the capacitive sensing performance. Two sensor test cases are investigated. The first case explores the use of highly uniform NP-AAO structures for humidity sensing applications while the second analyses the use of NP-AAO as a capacitive touch sensor for biological applications, namely, to detect the presence of small objects such as bacterial colonies of Escherichia Coli. A mathematical model based on equivalent electrical circuits was developed to evaluate the effect of humidity condensation (inside the pores) on the sensor capacitance and also to estimate the capacitance change of the sensor due to pore blocking by the presence of a certain number of bacterial microorganisms. Regarding the humidity sensing test cases, it was found that the sensitivity of the sensor fabricated in a phosphoric acid solution reaches up to 39 (pF/RH%), which is almost three times higher than the sensor fabricated in oxalic acid and about eight times higher than the sensor fabricated in sulfuric acid. Its improved sensitivity is explained in terms of the pore size effect on the mean free path and the loss of Brownian energy of the water vapour molecules. Concerning the touch sensing test case, it is demonstrated that the NP-AAO structures can be used as capacitive touch sensors because the magnitude of the capacitance change directly depends on the number of bacteria that cover the nanopores; the fraction of the electrode area activated by bacterial pore blocking is about 4.4% and 30.2% for B1 (E. Coli OD600nm=0.1) and B2 (E. Coli OD600nm=1) sensors, respectively., This research was funded by: the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the strategic funding grants UIDB/04029/2020, UIDB/04650/2020 and UIDB/04469/20 units; and, the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 program grant NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004, BioTecNorte., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Introduction Knowledge sharing (KS) is the “behaviour of disseminating one’s acquired knowledge with other members within one’s organisation” (Ryu et al., 2003, p. 113). The purpose of this research was to gain a better understanding of nurse-to-nurse knowledge sharing behaviours in an outpatient setting (community of practice) so that potential technological solutions could support the benefits and address weaknesses of current processes. The research was guided by the question: “What are the factors that motivate or inhibit knowledge sharing and knowledge capture for nurses working in an outpatient setting?” Although knowledge sharing in healthcare is ubiquitous, a previous domain investigation (conducted for a patient data platform (PDP) development for a rare disease clinic) uncovered that no one system could manage all knowledge generated with large amounts (of knowledge) remaining undocumented. When knowledge is not recorded in a permanent or reusable form, it can be difficult to share among professionals who are separated by geography, speciality or time. While the clinic in the original domain investigation had links to community, acute services and close ties to its equivalent in Europe, there was a relatively small pool of nurse participants (n=2). This research included a further four outpatient clinics for a total participant pool of n=17. Although knowledge management difficulties apply to many healthcare professionals; this research focused on nursing as they form the largest number of workers in healthcare. Future studies should include other disciplines and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. Methodology The study adopted an ethnographic approach. Participant-observation, field notes and semi-structured interviews were chosen as research methods. Interview transcriptions and field notes were coded using inductive reasoning using the framework described by Braun and Clarke (2006). A second researcher was used to ensure rigour. Nvivo software was used to manage data corpus. Findings The study identified how nurses share knowledge in a predominately oral world, both within and with those outside their units. While this method made knowledge capture difficult, it was preferred by participants as it was considered easy and allowed for ‘back and forth’ communication. Motivations to share knowledge identified were: ‘personal enjoyment’, ‘to improve patient outcomes’, ‘to avoid reinventing the wheel’ and ‘to make sense of an event’. Barriers discussed by participants were ‘time limitations’, ‘limited by the type of platform used’, ‘limited by environment’ and how nurses ‘can’t recall all they know’. The data uncovered that knowledge generated was captured in official clinical and academic documents but it was also embedded in the environment and embodied in people working within the environment. While official documents are easier to share across borders and time, knowledge captured in the environment or people are more difficult to capture in a reusable form. Acknowledgements: This research is partially funded by the ADAPT Centre under the SFI Research Centres Programme (Grant 13/RC/2106) and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund.

Over the past few years, an increasing dependence of the general population on information and communication technologies has been observed. As such, inclusive and age-friendly design has been of utmost importance to meet the context of every age cohort. Most of the software development projects tend to focus on the assumption relative to the users’ cognitive models, and when addressing senior citizens, these are very likely to have the risk of falling into stereotypes and non-used products. By contrast, involving senior citizens in the early stages of the design process tends to be crucial. The aim of this paper is to identify and validate a co-design process capable of influencing senior citizens’ experience in online communities. One of the elements of the co-design process that is described in the paper is a co-design toolkit to foster positive user experiences when interacting with online communities. The co- design process involved 36 adult learners from five Universities of the Third Age and 2 coordinators, organized into a set of 17 group sessions in the context of the miOne online community. Besides this co-design toolkit, a set of ‘best practices’ for involving the users in the co-design process and implications on the redesign of a Senior Online Community are proposed. This work was supported by the research project SEDUCE 2.0—Use of Communication and Information in the miOne online community by senior citizens. This project is funded by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., COMPETE 2020, Portugal 2020 and European Union, under the European Regional Development Fund, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031696 SEDUCE 2.0. in publication

Inkjet printing (IJP) is a very appealing cost-effective deposition technique to achieve large-area solution-derived functional films. For many applications, it is very challenging to increase the film thickness in order to achieve competitive performance, for instance, high critical currents in superconducting films. In this paper, the preparation of superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 thick films (∼1.1 μm) using a single deposition is reported. Specific rules for ink design, deposition protocols, and pyrolysis processes are provided. The most important aspect is to formulate an ink with a solvent having a high boiling point that keeps the whole film wet during deposition to avoid liquid movement due to coffee-ring effects. An additional success has been to modify the ink with a photocurable polyacrylic ester varnish which after polymerization with a UV LED lamp helps keep homogeneous thickness. This varnish also helped avoid the generation of film instabilities (wrinkling or cracking) during pyrolysis. Homogeneous pyrolyzed thick films are transformed into epitaxial thick films with high critical currents. The IJP process is shown to be valid to prepare nanocomposite films using colloidal inks including pre-prepared BaZrO3 nanoparticles. The nanocomposite thick films display enhanced vortex pinning, thus keeping high critical currents under high magnetic fields., The authors acknowledge the EUROTAPES project (EU-FP7 NMP-LA-2012-280432), COACHSUPENERGY (MAT2014- 51778-C2-1-R and MAT2014-51778-C2-2-R), SUMATE (RTI2018-095853-BC21 and RTI2018-095853-B-C22) cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund and SUPERINKS (RTC-2015-3840-S) from MINECO (cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund), 2017-SGR 753 from Generalitat de Catalunya, and COST Action NANOCOHYBRI (CA16218). ICMAB authors acknowledge the Center of Excellence awards Severo Ochoa SEV2015-0496 and CEX2019-000917-S. The authors acknowledge the Scientific Services at ICMAB, ICN2 Electron Microscopy Division, and LMA-INA from Aragon. They also acknowledge KAO Chimigraf for providing varnishes and Bruker HTS for providing metallic substrates.

In the current programming period of the EU Cohesion Policy, 2014-2020, two instruments have been introduced to implement territorial strategies based on economic and social cohesion: Community-led Local Development (CLLD) and Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). These refer to all the funds covered by the Common Strategic Framework (European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund, European Agricultural Fund for Regional Development, European Fisheries Fund and Cohesion Fund).

The main goal of the present paper is to present the study of energy efficiency measures for an electrical material industry. The high-energy consumption of this kind of industry lead companies to search for solutions that allow increasing the energy efficiency in their installations and in the processes, promoting the reduction of the energy consumption and costs. In this context, the objectives of this study emerged, which resulted from the main needs identified by the company. Therefore, the work was divided into four parts. The first one, was the study of replacing the existing lighting (mainly mercury vapor lamps by led); another study conducted was the replacement of the electric motors in injection machines by new and more efficient ones; the third one was the installation of a photovoltaic solar system (for self-consumption) and, finally, the project of a new power converter station for the company. The energy efficiency studies carried out are based on: a careful analysis of the data provided by the company; all the measurements done; the consumption profiles that have been drawn; an extensive market research (with the purpose of finding the most efficient solutions for each case); and in already existing and proven calculation methodologies, leading, in this way, to a greater reliability of the obtained results. These studies showed to which extent the implementation of the various measures presented are economically viable, their impact on the reduction of energy consumption and the annual savings achieved. This work was supported by Coimbra Institute of Engineering – Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra and by projects: UID/MULTI/00308/2019 (supported by the Portuguese ‘Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia’: FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology) and by the European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE 2020 Programme, FCT Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within project T4ENERTEC (POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-029820).

One of the objectives of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is to prevent and reduce the effects of natural hazards, particularly ones caused by climate changes. The ICZM methodologies include use of geographic information systems, from data collection and geo-analysis to dissemination of information to the public. As a part of the Interreg MED Co-evolve project cofinanced by the European regional development fund, the ICZM based action plan is being developed for the City of Kaštela in Croatia. Activities include assessing coastal vulnerability to climate change, focusing on sea flooding and storm damages and related socio-economic vulnerabilities. The paper presents development of large scale vulnerability analysis, adopted from the methodologies developed for mid and small scales. Suitability of the available data is assessed, either official or open source, and data gaps are described. The analysis’s results are presented in terms of the assets exposed to coastal flooding and storms, and future improvements of analysis towards house level vulnerability analysis is envisaged.

We investigated the short-term effects of spent coffee grounds on the physical properties of two Mediterranean agricultural soils (Calcisol and Luvisol). The in vitro assay was performed with two spent coffee grounds doses (60 and 240 Mg ha-1), two incubation times (30 and 60 days) and two modalities: with and without lettuce seedlings (Lactuca sativa var. longifolia). Spent coffee grounds addition increased water retention at -33 and -1500 kPa, and decreased bulk density and plant-available water content. With spent coffee grounds, the percentage of macroaggregates increased, the percentage of meso- and microaggregates decreased and the structural stability of all types of aggregates increased. The stereomicroscopy images showed that: the structural aggregates were rounded, the porosity increased by 316%, the structure was ordered into smaller aggregates, the incorporation of spent coffee grounds particles could occur in intraped cracks and spent coffee grounds particles could act as a binding agent. Scanning electron microscopy also showed that spent coffee grounds particles interacted with mineral particles and integrated into soil structure; moreover, fungal hyphae also developed on many spent coffee grounds particles. If spent coffee grounds effects are compared with those described in the literature for other organic amendments, the same trend was observed in most of the soil physical properties although with a different intensity, principally with regard to structural stability., This work was supported by project AGL2014-53895-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) and by project CGL2016-80308-P from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2015-2018).

[EN] Labour market uncertainty makes difficult to get (and keep) a high-quality job even for graduate students. Moreover, this situation has been worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study is to test the influence that personal employability has on maintaining (or being able to find a new) high-quality job in a sample of young university graduates that faced the job market crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the four personal employability dimensions of Fugate et al.’s (2004) model: career identity, personal adaptability, human capital, and social capital. Our hypotheses state that the four dimensions of employability are positively related with employment status and with job quality indicators (salary, horizontal fit, job satisfaction). The results obtained in a sample of 136 university graduates show that social capital contributes to being employed after several months of job market uncertainty caused by COVID-19. Moreover, career identity positively predicts horizontal fit and job satisfaction. The study shows the importance of social capital and career identity under uncertain job market situations to foster positive employment outcomes., This work was supported by research grants provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [Ref. PSI2017-86882-R].

Ministry of Economy, Knowledge, Business and University of the Junta de Andalucia, Grant/Award Number: A-CTS-229-UGR18; European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Grant/Award Number: 18/00617, Objective: To compare the postpartum psychopathological symptoms of women who gave birth before the pandemic with those who gave birth during the pandemic. Methods: A total of 212 women participated in the study, of which 96 gave birth before the pandemic and 116 during the pandemic. Psychopathological symptoms, postpartum depression, perceived stress, and resilience were evaluated. Results: Women who gave birth during the pandemic had higher scores on somatization, obsessions and compulsions, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism. In addition, perceived stress was the common predictor of an increase in these symptoms. Conclusion: Postpartum is a complicated period in a woman's life. Many psychological adaptations take place and women may be subject to psychological alterations during this period. In addition, women who gave birth during the COVID-19 crisis may show greater psychological vulnerability, due to the specific situation experienced during the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic may have played a role in the increase in psychopathological symptoms after childbirth. Detecting possible symptoms postpartum plays a crucial role, because it allows intervening and preventing the development of psychopathologies., Ministry of Economy, Knowledge, Business and University of the Junta de Andalucia A-CTS-229-UGR18, European Commission, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities 18/00617

The PREDIMEDPlus trial was supported by the Spanish government's official funding agency for biomedical research, ISCIII, through the Fondo de Investigacion para la Salud (FIS) and cofunded by European Union ERDF/ESF, "A way to make Europe"/"Investing in your future" (five coordinated FIS projects led by JS-S and JVid, including the following: PI13/00272, PI13/01123, PI13/00462, PI13/00233, PI13/00728, PI14/01722, PI14/00636, PI14/01206, PI14/01919, PI14/01374, PI16/01873, PI16/01094, PI16/00501, PI16/00533, PI16/00366, PI17/00764, PI17/01827, PI17/01441, PI17/01732, PI17/00926, PI19/00309, PI19/01032, PI19/00576, PI19/00017, and PI19/00781) , the Special Action Project entitled: Implementacion y evaluacion de una intervencion intensiva sobre la actividad fisica Cohorte PREDIMED-Plus grant to JSS, the European Research Council (Advanced Research Grant 2013-2018, 340918) to MAMG, the Recercaixa Grant to JS-S (2013ACUP00194) , a grant from the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2017/017) , a SEMER-GEN grant, and funds from the European Regional Development Fund (CB06/03) . Study resulting from the SLT006/17/00246 grant, funded by the Department of Health of the Generalitat de Catalunya by the call "Accio instrumental de programes de recerca orientats en l'ambit de la recerca i la innovacio en salut". We thank the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya for institutional support. This publication has been possible with the support of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (MICINN) (FPU 17/01925) . Jordi SalasSalvado, senior author of this study, is partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. IP-G receives a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU 17/01925) . Dr. NB-T is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship (Juan de la Cierva-Formacion, FJC2018-036016-I) . I.M GimenezAlba received an FPU grant from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (reference FPU 18/01703) . C.B. received a Fernando Tarongi Bauza PhD Grant., Background & aims: The association between drinking water consumption and adiposity has been poorly explored. Therefore, we aimed to analyse the associations between the frequency of drinking water consumption and body weight and waist circumference changes in an elderly Mediterranean cohort. Methods: A total of 1832 elderly participants (aged 55e75 years) with metabolic syndrome from the PREDIMED-Plus study with baseline data on drinking water and other beverages assessed by a validated 32-item Spanish fluid-intake questionnaire and with data on body weight (BW) and waist circumference (WC) at 1-year and 2-year were included in these prospective analyses. Multivariable linear regression models were fitted to assess the b-coefficients and 95% confidence interval (CI) for BWand WC changes in terms of categories of baseline drinking water consumption (tap water and bottled water). The theoretical effect on BWand WC of replacing several beverages with drinking water was assessed using mathematical models. Results: The baseline frequency of drinking water consumptionwas inversely associated with 1-year and 2- year changes in BW. b-coefficients (95%CI) across categories ofwater consumption (, Spanish Government European Commission, European Union ERDF/ESF, "A way to make Europe"/"Investing in your future" PI13/00272 PI13/01123 PI13/00462 PI13/00233 PI13/00728 PI14/01722 PI14/00636 PI14/01206 PI14/01919 PI14/01374 PI16/01873 PI16/01094 PI16/00501 PI16/00533 PI16/00366, Special Action Project entitled: Implementacion y evaluacion de una intervencion intensiva sobre la actividad fisica Cohorte PREDIMED-Plus grant, European Research Council (ERC), European Commission 340918, Recercaixa Grant 2013ACUP00194, Generalitat Valenciana European Commission PROMETEO/2017/017, SEMER-GEN grant European Commission CB06/03, Department of Health of the Generalitat de Catalunya SLT006/17/00246, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (MICINN) FPU 17/01925, ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme, Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports FPU 17/01925, Juan de la Cierva-Formacion FJC2018-036016-I, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities FPU 18/01703, Fernando Tarongi Bauza PhD Grant, The European Union ERDF/ESF, "A way to make Europe"/"Investing in your future" PI17/00764 PI17/01827 PI17/01441 PI17/01732 PI17/00926 PI19/00309 PI19/01032 PI19/00576 PI19/00017 PI19/00781

Nosocomial or hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) have a major impact on mortality worldwide. Enterococcus and Staphylococcus are among the leading causes of HAIs and thus are important pathogens to control mainly due to their increased antibiotic resistance. The gold-standard diagnostic methods for HAIs are time-consuming, which hinders timely and adequate treatment. Therefore, the development of fast and accurate diagnostic tools is an urgent demand. In this study, we combined the sensitivity of magnetoresistive (MR) sensors, the portability of a lab-on-chip platform, and the specificity of phage receptor binding proteins (RBPs) as probes for the rapid and multiplex detection of Enterococcus and Staphylococcus. For this, bacterial cells were firstly labelled with magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) functionalized with RBPs and then measured on the MR sensors. The results indicate that the RBP-MNPS provided a specific individual and simultaneous capture of more than 70\% of Enterococcus and Staphylococcus cells. Moreover, high signals from the MR sensors were obtained for these samples, providing the detection of both pathogens at low concentrations (10 CFU/ml) in less than 2h. Overall, the lab-on-chip MR platform herein presented holds great potential to be used as a point-of-care for the rapid, sensitive and specific multiplex diagnosis of bacterial infections., Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Grant/Award Numbers: PTDC/BTM‐SAL/ 32442/2017 (POCI‐01‐0145‐FEDER‐03442), UID /05367/2020, UIDB/04469/2020; European Regional Development Fund, Grant/Award Number: NORTE‐01‐0145‐ FEDER‐000004, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The development of all-printed, flexible solar cells of high efficiency and ultra-low weight will offer advancements for new market entrants. Herein, we report the design and fabrication of all-printed in ambient air, super-flexible perovskite solar cells with approaching 20% power conversion efficiency and extremely low weight of 5.1 g m-2 leading to an unprecedented power-to-weight ratio of 38,470 W Kg-1. This performance advance was achieved through the design of a highly transparent and conducting nanopaper used as a free-standing bottom electrode (FSBE). The FSBE consisted of cellulose nanocrystals grafted with semi-metallic super-reduced polyoxometalate clusters that enabled high conductivities up to 18 S cm-1 combined with transparency >96%. It also acted as a conformal barrier preventing performance loss upon heating at 95 oC under continuous illumination in inert environment; and strong resistance to decomposition when immersed in a mild citric acid water solution for 100 days, which we further exploit to demonstrate full device recyclability. The inherent flexibility of cellulose nanocrystals enabled remarkable flexibility of these cells under 2,000 repeated bending and folding cycles and mechanical strength upon extensive strain up to 20%. Notably, the nanopaper remained unaffected for strains up to 60%. These findings open the door for efficient and lightweight solar cells with a low environmental impact.

Similarities and differences in the submicron atmospheric aerosol chemical composition are analyzed from a unique set of measurements performed at 21 sites across Europe for at least one year. These sites are located between 35 and 62°N and 10° W – 26°E, and represent various types of settings (remote, coastal, rural, industrial, urban). Measurements were all carried out on-line with a 30-min time resolution using mass spectroscopy based instruments known as Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitors (ACSM) and Aerosol Mass Spectrometers (AMS) and following common measurement guidelines. Data regarding organics, sulfate, nitrate and ammonium concentrations, as well as the sum of them called non-refractory submicron aerosol mass concentration ([NR-PM1]) are discussed. NR-PM1 concentrations generally increase from remote to urban sites. They are mostly larger in the mid-latitude band than in southern and northern Europe. On average, organics account for the major part (36–64%) of NR-PM1 followed by sulfate (12–44%) and nitrate (6–35%). The annual mean chemical composition of NR-PM1 at rural (or regional background) sites and urban background sites are very similar. Considering rural and regional background sites only, nitrate contribution is higher and sulfate contribution is lower in mid-latitude Europe compared to northern and southern Europe. Large seasonal variations in concentrations (μg/m³) of one or more components of NR-PM1 can be observed at all sites, as well as in the chemical composition of NR-PM1 (%) at most sites. Significant diel cycles in the contribution to [NR-PM1] of organics, sulfate, and nitrate can be observed at a majority of sites both in winter and summer. Early morning minima in organics in concomitance with maxima in nitrate are common features at regional and urban background sites. Daily variations are much smaller at a number of coastal and rural sites. Looking at NR-PM1 chemical composition as a function of NR-PM1 mass concentration reveals that although organics account for the major fraction of NR-PM1 at all concentration levels at most sites, nitrate contribution generally increases with NR-PM1 mass concentration and predominates when NR-PM1 mass concentrations exceed 40 μg/m³ at half of the sites., This study was partially supported by the European Union's projects ACTRIS (EU FP7-262254) and ACTRIS-2 (EU Horizon 2020–654109). COST Action CA16109 COLOSSAL, Chemical On-Line cOmpoSition and Source Apportionment of fine aerosoL, is acknowledged. The ACSM observations at Birkenes was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment Strategic Institute Program. IDAEA-CSIC (3 datasets: BCN, MSA, MSY) was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER funds under the PRISMA project (CGL 2012-39623-C02-1). The London measurements were supported by the UK National Research Council through the ClearfLo project and a PhD studentship (grant refs. NE/H008136/1 and NE/I528142/1) and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). ECPL personel, namely Nikolaos Mihalopoulos, Aikaterini Bougiatioti and Iasonas Stavroulas acknowledge support by the project “Panhellenic infrastructure for atmospheric composition and climate change, PANACEA” (MIS 5021516) which is implemented under the Action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure”, funded by the Operational Programme” Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014–2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund). IMT Lille Douai acknowledges financial support from the CaPPA (Chemical and Physical Properties of the Atmosphere) project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the PIA (Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir) under contract ANR-11-LABX-0005-01, and two CPER projects funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the CNRS, the Regional Council “Hauts-de-France” and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF): Climibio, and IRENI (additionally financed by the Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque). S. Zhang thanks IMT Lille Douai and the Regional Council “Hauts-de-France” for her PhD grant. Prague co-authors would like to acknowledge a Czech MEYS's project under INTER-EXCELENCE INTERCOST program under grant agreement LTC18068 and from European Regional Development Fund-Project under the grant ACTRIS-CZ RI (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001315). EPA Ireland, Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment (DCCAE) and the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) project BACCHUS under grant agreement n_603445 are acknowledged for research support at Mace Head. The physical measurements were also funded by the German Ultrafine Aerosol Network GUAN, which was jointly established with help of the German Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) grants F&E 370343200 (German title: “Erfassung der Zahl feiner und ultrafeiner Partikel in der Auβenluft”), 2008–2010, and F&E 371143232 (German title: “Trendanalysen gesundheitsgefährdender Fein-und Ultrafeinstaubfraktionen unter Nutzung der im German Ultrafine Aerosol Network (GUAN) ermittelten Immissionsdaten durch Fortführung und Interpretation der Messreihen”) 2012–2014. We also acknowledge the WCCAP (World Calibration Center for Aerosol Physics) as part of the WMO-GAW program. The WCCAP is base-funded by the German Federal Environmental Agency (Umweltbundesamt), Germany. Support by the European Regional Development Funds (EFRE – Europe funds Saxony) is gratefully acknowledged. Atmospheric measurements performed in Corsica is part of the ChArMEx project supported by CNRS-INSU, ADEME, Météo-France and CEA in the framework of the multidisciplinary programme MISTRALS (Mediterranean Integrated Studies aT Regional And Local Scales; http://mistrals-home.org/, last access: June 10, 2020). Final data processing of these measurements has been supported by the EMME-CARE (Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East Climate and Atmosphere Research Center) which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 856612 and the Cyprus Government. The measurements in Switzerland were supported by the Federal Office for the Environment. We thank the International Foundation High Altitude Research Stations Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat (HFSJG) for the opportunity to perform experiments on the Jungfraujoch.

Supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R21ES029681; R01ES030691, R01ES029944, R01ES030364, R21ES028903, and P30ES007048, to L.C.; R01ES030691, R01ES030364, R21ES028903, and P30ES007048, to R.M.; R01ES030691, R01ES029944, R01ES030364, and P30ES007048, to D.V.C.; R01ES030691, R01ES029944, R01ES030364, and R21ES028903, to D.V.; R01ES030364, to N.S.; and P30ES007048, to E.G), the National Institutes of Health (P01CA196569 and R01CA140561, to D.V.C.; P30DK048522, to N.S.), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) (MS16/00128, to M.C.), and the Juan de la Cierva-Incorporacion fellowship (IJC2018-035394-I, to L.M.), awarded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad. The Human Early Life Exposome project was supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013, under grant 30833). INMA data collections were supported by grants from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, CIBERESP, and the Generalitat de Catalunya-CIRIT. The KANC cohort was supported by the Lithuanian Agency for Science Innovation and Technology (31V-77). For a full list of funding that supported the EDEN cohort, see https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyv151. The Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services and the Ministry of Education and Research. The Rhea cohort was supported by European projects; the Greek Ministry of Health (Program of Prevention of Obesity and Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Preschool Children, in Heraklion district, Crete, Greece), 2011-2014; and Rhea Plus: Primary Prevention Program of Environmental Risk Factors for Reproductive Health, and Child Health: 2012-2015. The BiB cohort was supported by a Wellcome Trust infrastructure grant (WT101597MA). R.R.C.M. and J.W. received funding from the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration for Yorkshire and Humber. The CRG/UPF Proteomics Unit is part of the Spanish Infrastructure for Omics Technologies (ICTS OmicsTech) and a member of the ProteoRed PRB3 consortium, which is supported by grant PT17/0019 of the PE I + D+i 2013-2016 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and European Regional Development Fund. This study was further supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013-2017 (SEV-2012-0208), and Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR595).

The EU and the Member States have been forced in recent years to take a stronger position against the growing trend of tax fraud, tax evasion, and tax avoidance. The EU legislative and non-legislative acts in this area have resulted from political attitudes, economic intentions, proposals, and compromises reached between the individual Member States, on the one hand, and the EU, on the other, in their effort to combat fraudulent behaviour in the taxation area. The fight against fraudulent behaviour in the taxation area, be it tax fraud, tax evasion or tax avoidance, has become a real global challenge not only for the EU and its Member States but also for the entire world. These are different forms and methods for misusing tax systems both within the EU and abroad. This paper is part of the project: “Electronic methods for detecting unusual business transactions in the business environment” (ITMS code: 313022W057), co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and also the project “VEGA1 / 0194/19 — Research on process-oriented financial management with a focus on to detect tax evasion in international trade”.

Business accelerators play a key role in the initial critical stages of assessment of commercial viability, offering mentorship provision of funding and protection of intellectual property (IP) for product development and refinement. However, little is known about the decision-making criteria and detailed analysis of the underlying criteria and interdependencies between the key factors used by accelerator organizations to fund start-ups. This article focuses on the decision-making criteria utilized by a leading £21M accelerator program, largely funded by the European Regional Development Fund for initial stage funding and IP protection for product and innovation commercialization. We incorporate a multimethodological interpretive-based approach based on Day's “Real-Win-Worth” framework to develop the interrelationships and ranking between the factors. The results highlight the significance and weighting attached to the factors associated with the technical competency of the proposer and evidence of demand existing for the product. We propose a new framework that models the key factor interrelationships offering additional insight to accelerator-based decision making.

Most video analytics applications rely on object detectors to localize objects in frames. However, when real-time is a requirement, running the detector at all the frames is usually not possible. This is somewhat circumvented by instantiating visual object trackers between detector calls, but this does not scale with the number of objects. To tackle this problem, we present SiamMT, a new deep learning multiple visual object tracking solution that applies single-object tracking principles to multiple arbitrary objects in real-time. To achieve this, SiamMT reuses feature computations, implements a novel crop-and-resize operator, and defines a new and efficient pairwise similarity operator. SiamMT naturally scales up to several dozens of targets, reaching 25 fps with 122 simultaneous objects for VGA videos, or up to 100 simultaneous objects in HD720 video. SiamMT has been validated on five large real-time benchmarks, achieving leading performance against current state-of-the-art trackers This research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [grant numbers PID2020-112623GB-I00, RTI2018-097088-B-C32], and the Galician Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade [grant numbers ED431C 2018/29, ED431C 2017/69, accreditation 2016–2019, ED431G/08]. These grants are co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Lorenzo Vaquero is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Universidades under the FPU national plan (FPU18/03174) SI

The energy allocation problem in a massive access setting under iterative successive interference cancellation (SIC) is undertaken in this work. The classic one-iteration SIC still has room for improvement when the channel coding schemes adopted are non-error free. In this work, we investigate a satellite return link in which transmitters employ the same physical layer and transmission protocol: a given encoder, and spreading-based nonorthogonal multiple access. Leveraging iterative SIC, the gateway is endowed with strong interference suppression potential to deal with many uncoordinated transmissions. We elaborate on the interplay between energy and reliability for all users by designing an energy allocation with minimum energy expenditure when the iterative SIC receiver performs two decoding attempts per user. We resort to the user-asymptotic regime to address the randomness in the multi-feature system model of two-iteration SIC, which has turned the analysis into a deterministic one. We formulate our final design as a vector optimization aided by tools from the calculus of variations. We show the competitive performance achieved by the designed allocation, specially under encoders associated with short-length codes. We also assess our analysis by simulating a low-level SIC implementation. Work supported in part by Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI, Spain) and by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through project RODIN (PID2019-105717RB-C22), and in part by the Catalan administration (AGAUR) under Grant 2017 SGR 578 and Fellowship 2020FI B2 00062.

OBJECTIVE: There is high prevalence of cigarette smoking in individuals with first-episode psychosis (FEP) prior to psychosis onset. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of previous tobacco use with or without cannabis on first psychotic experiences in FEP and the impact of this use on age of onset of symptoms, including prodromes. METHODS: Retrospective analyses from the naturalistic, longitudinal, multicentre, "Phenotype-Genotype and Environmental Interaction. Application of a Predictive Model in First Psychotic Episodes (PEPs)" Study. The authors analysed sociodemographic/clinical data of 284 FEP patients and 231 matched healthy controls, and evaluated first psychotic experiences of patients using the Symptom Onset in Schizophrenia Inventory. RESULTS: FEP patients had significantly higher prevalence of tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use than controls. The FEP group with tobacco use only prior to onset (N=56) had more sleep disturbances (42.9% vs 18.8%, P=0.003) and lower prevalence of negative symptoms, specifically social withdrawal (33.9% vs 58%, P=0.007) than FEP with no substance use (N=70), as well as lower prevalence of ideas of reference (80.4% vs 92.4%, P=0.015), perceptual abnormalities (46.4% vs 67.4%, P=0.006), hallucinations (55.4% vs 71.5%, P=0.029), and disorganised thinking (41.1% vs 61.1%, P=0.010) than FEP group with previous tobacco and cannabis use (N=144). FEP patients with cannabis and tobacco use had lower age at first prodromal or psychotic symptom (mean=23.73years [SD=5.09]) versus those with tobacco use only (mean=26.21 [SD=4.80]) (P=0.011). CONCLUSIONS: The use of tobacco alone was not related to earlier age of onset of a first psychotic experience, but the clinical profile of FEP patients is different depending on previous tobacco use with or without cannabis. This study received economic support from the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness, the Carlos III Health Care Insti-tute (Grant Number PI11/00325, PI14/00612), the European Regional Development Fund, the European Union, “Una manera de hacer Europa/ A Way of Shaping Europe”, and CIBERSAM.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a complex disease linked with several chronic diseases. We aimed at identifying genetic variants associated with NAFLD and evaluate their functional consequences. We performed a genome-wide meta-analysis of four cohorts of electronic health record-documented NAFLD in participants of European ancestry (8434 cases and 770,180 controls). We identified five potential susceptibility loci for NAFLD (located at or near GCKR, TR1B1, MAU2/TM6SF2, APOE, and PNPLA3). We also report a potentially causal effect of lower LPL expression in adipose tissue on NAFLD susceptibility and an effect of the FTO genotype on NAFLD that is likely explained by obesity. Positive genetic correlations between NAFLD and cardiometabolic diseases and risk factors such as body fat accumulation/distribution, lipoprotein-lipid levels, insulin resistance and coronary artery disease and negative genetic correlations with parental lifespan, socio-economic status and acetoacetate levels were observed. Altogether, this large GWAS meta-analysis revealed new insights into the genetic architecture of NAFLD. Funding: Part of this study was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development fund. The work of Estonian Genome Center, Univ. of Tartu has been supported by the European Regional Development Fund and grants No. GENTRANSMED (2014-2020.4.01.15-0012), MOBERA5 (Norface Network project no 462.16.107) and 2014-2020.4.01.16-0125. This study was also funded by the European Union through Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant no 810645 and through the European Regional Development Fund project no. MOBEC008 and Estonian Research Council Grant PUT1660. Ethical Approval: This study and the use of data from 4119 cases and 190,120 controls was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Tartu (Approval number 288/M-18).

This study was supported by grant CGL2016-77503-R from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), cofounded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Union (EU), and the RNM-369 research group of the regional government of Andalusia. The authors also thank the State Harbors (Ministry of Public Services, Government of Spain) for providing the sea temperature dataset. One of the authors conducted this work as part of the activities of the Aarhus University Centre for Water Technology, WATEC. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada/CBUA., The temperature distribution in coastal aquifers is determined by the effect of different heat sources: surface water recharge, sea infiltration, and geothermal heat. In previous studies, the signal generated in groundwater by each source was individually studied, and in the case of geothermal heat, it was often not considered. This research is the first in considering all possible sources of heat in a coastal aquifer simultaneously by using a combination of field data and numerical modeling to present a reference model based on the characteristics of a real aquifer. The position of the freshwater-saltwater interface (FSI) and its effect on temperature distribution have been modeled considering variable-density flow, coupled heat and solute transport. This study broadens the theoretical knowledge of temperature distribution in coastal aquifers based on a sensitivity analysis of hydraulic and thermic parameters. Furthermore, a case study (the Motril-Salobreña aquifer) was modeled with field data calibration to test the applicability to real aquifers. The new insights gained through this study provide integrated knowledge of the temperature distribution in coastal areas and establish the basis for future research using heat as a tracer in seaside aquifers., Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) CGL2016-77503-R, Junta de Andalucia RNM-369, Universidad de Granada/CBUA

Introduction This study aimed to determine the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and rapid renal function decline and to identify indices associated with this decline among adults attending a diabetes center in Northern Europe. Research design and methods This is a retrospective cohort study of 4606 patients who attended a diabetes center in Ireland between June 2012 and December 2016. Definition/staging of chronic kidney disease used the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) 2012 classification based on data from the most recently attended appointment. Relevant longitudinal trends and variabilities were derived from serial records prior to index visit. Rapid renal function decline was defined based on per cent and absolute rates of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) change. Multiple linear regression was used to explore the relationships between explanatory variables and per cent eGFR change. Results 42.0% (total), 23.4% (type 1 diabetes), 47.9% (type 2 diabetes) and 32.6% (other diabetes) had DKD. Rapid decline based on per cent change was more frequent in type 2 than in type 1 diabetes (32.8% vs 14.0%, p

The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown significantly in popularity, accompanied by increased capacity and lower cost of communications, and overwhelming development of technologies. At the same time, big data and realtime data analysis have taken on great importance and have been accompanied by unprecedented interest in sharing data among citizens, public administrations and other organisms, giving rise to what is known as the Collaborative Internet of Things. This growth in data and infrastructure must be accompanied by a software architecture that allows its exploitation. Although there are various proposals focused on the exploitation of the IoT at edge, fog and/or cloud levels, it is not easy to find a software solution that exploits the three tiers together, taking maximum advantage not only of the analysis of contextual and situational data at each tier, but also of two-way communications between adjacent ones. In this paper, we propose an architecture that solves these deficiencies by proposing novel technologies which are appropriate for managing the resources of each tier: edge, fog and cloud. In addition, the fact that two-way communications along the three tiers of the architecture is allowed considerably enriches the contextual and situational information in each layer, and substantially assists decision making in real time. The paper illustrates the proposed software architecture through a case study of respiratory disease surveillance in hospitals. As a result, the proposed architecture permits efficient communications between the different tiers responding to the needs of these types of IoT scenarios., This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under project FAME [RTI2018-093608-B-C33] and excellence network RCIS [RED2018-102654-T]. We also thank Carlos Llamas Jaén for his support with the setting up of the performance evaluation tests.

This study addresses a research gap by focusing on incubatees located in a UK university-based incubator. INNOSPACE provided the case study for this book and falls between a non-profit incubator and an academic incubator on the continuum developed by Allen and McCluskey (1990). The overall aim was to help university students and graduates start new businesses with a view to creating jobs and enhancing the local economy. The set-up funding for INNOSPACE was provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Manchester Metropolitan University Business School (MMUBS), and the Centre for Enterprise (CfE). A large office space provided by MMUBS was under-utilised before INNOSPACE was established. During the first operational year, management charged incubatees a rent well below market price. Before the ERDF funding was due to run out, the management team was thinking of ways of sustaining INNOSPACE financially. After funding the first year, the University agreed to continue to provide the office facilities but insisted that the management team had to be supported through rental income. Consequently, a tiered rent system was introduced depending on the facilities incubatees wanted (or could afford) to access. The rental packages ranged from postal address only with no other administrative support, hot-desking, a dedicated desk, and a dedicated office on a different floor (rent depending on size of office). Because of the benefits provided to incubatees and the increasing number of tenants, it was possible to increase the overall rent substantially and the incubator became partially financially self-sustaining financially and independent of MMUBS and the CfE. INNOSPACE fits with Todorovic and Moenter’s (2010: 28) definition of a university incubator:INNOSPACE regularly had student visitors from MMUBS and other University departments who had studied or were studying subjects related to entrepreneurship or small firms. Some incubatees offered work experience to students. For example, Jamie Bettles (Sect. 10.6) saw the on-campus location as a platform for collaboration and recruitment (including opportunities for placements, internships, student-led consultancy projects, and part-time and full-time employment). In a sense, the incubator complemented existing educational programmes. The University and the CfE promoted INNOSPACE to students and encouraged them to turn their ideas into real businesses. Hence, MMU students had the opportunity to test out their ideas before or after graduation. When setting up and running INNOSPACE, academics and managers from various MMU Faculties, who were interested in supporting entrepreneurship, were invited to join the Steering Group, which we discuss in more detail below. In addition, most of the business advisors were associated with business support organisations such as Blue Orchid and Winning Pitch, which exposed incubatees to mentors with long experience of supporting new businesses.

Within the United Nations Sustainable Development 2030 agenda, sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sector needs sea water quality monitoring. This is a very demanding and expensive task which results in the sea being largely undersampled. MaDCrow is a research and development project supported by the European Regional Development Fund, that involves citizens as data collectors while aiming to improve public environmental awareness and participation in scientific research. Its goal is to create an innovative technological infrastructure for real-time acquisition, integration and access of data, thus generating knowledge on sea water quality and marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Trieste. Data acquisition is based on an autonomous and removable device, developed within the project, that can be deployed on any small size sailing boat, recreational vessel, or fishing boat. The device holds low-cost sensors to measure pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and salinity and the hardware and software to acquire, georeference and transmit the environmental data without interfering with the activities of the boats. In this work we analyze the use, capabilities and advantages of low-cost sensors but also their limitations, comparing, with a special focus on pH, their performances with those of the traditional ones. Applying the paradigm in a highly anthropized area such as the Gulf of Trieste, which is characterized also by a very high spatial and temporal variability of environments, we point out that this new approach allows to monitor sea water quality and highlight local anomalies with a resolution and spatial and temporal coverage that was not achievable with previous procedures, but yet at very low costs. Once received, data are then processed and submitted to a mediation flow that contextualizes and disseminates them for public use on a website. The final products have been customized to reach stakeholders such as tourists, fishermen and policy makers. The availability of information understandable to everyone, while fostering environmental awareness, stimulates, at the same time, involvement and participation of citizen scientists in the initiative. In the future, while committing to enlarge the number of participants, we will extend the analysis also toward other types of sensors.

Atmospheric factors, such as clouds, wind, dust, or aerosols, play an important role in the power generation of photovoltaic (PV) plants. Among these factors, soiling has been revealed as one of the most relevant causes diminishing the PV yield, mainly in arid zones or deserts. The effect of soiling on the PV performance can be analyzed by means of I–V curves measured simultaneously on two PV panels: one soiled and the other clean. To this end, two I–V tracers, or one I–V tracer along with a multiplexer, are needed. Unfortunately, these options are usually expensive, and only one I–V tracer is typically available at the site of interest. In this work, the design of a low-cost multiplexer is described. The multiplexer is controlled by a low-cost single-board microcontroller manufactured by ArduinoTM, and is capable of managing several pairs of PV panels almost simultaneously. The multiplexer can be installed outdoors, in contrast to many commercial I–V tracers or multiplexers. This advantage allows the soiling effect to be monitored on two PV panels, by means of I–V indoor tracers. I–V curves measured by the low-cost multiplexer are also presented, and preliminary results are analyzed, This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness “PVCastSOIL” project No ENE2017-83790-C3-1-2-3-R, in collaboration with the European Regional Development Fund

In recent years, the interest in the study of seas and oceans has dramatically increased as they are considered of primary importance for forecasting catastrophic events or for supporting blue economy, as well as the marine tourism, improving the tourist reception or enhancing any marine-related activity. This led to the development of IT platforms that allow to monitor the marine environment and provide a number of services to different kinds of final users, whether they are private individuals interested in the status of the seas, or companies whose business depends on the marine environmental monitoring. The main limitations of current platforms are due to such a difference between free trials, which often focus only on specific aspects of deep waters, and subscriptions, which provide analyzes whose reliability is generally not proportional to the costs. This paper presents SmartWave, a project funded by Regione Sicilia (European Regional Development Fund), that aims to develop a novel IT platform to observe and predict phenomena that characterize the marine environment, while also providing the consumer with a unified portal to collect, access and analyze marine-related information. To achieve this goal, one of the main challenges of this project is to aggregate and standardize heterogeneous data from multiple sources in order to offer very accurate information to private or business consumers.

This work was funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness) and cofunded by the European Regional Development Fund, through the CIBER in cardiovascular diseases (CB16/11/00502). Sí

[EN] Background: eHealth interventions are widely used in clinical trials and increasingly in care settings as well; however, their efficacy in real-world contexts remains unknown. ReMindCare is a smartphone app that has been systematically implemented in a first episode of psychosis program (FEPP) for patients with early psychosis since 2018. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of ReMindCare after 19 months of use in the clinic and varying use by individual patients. Methods: The integration of the ReMindCare app into the FEPP started in October 2018. Patients with early psychosis self-selected to the app (ReMindCare group) or treatment as usual (TAU group). The outcome variables considered were adherence to the intervention and number of relapses, hospital admissions, and visits to urgent care units. Data from 90 patients with early psychosis were analyzed: 59 in the ReMindCare group and 31 in the TAU group. The mean age of the sample was 32.8 (SD 9.4) years, 73% (66/90) were males, 91% (83/90) were White, and 81% (74/90) were single. Results: Significant differences between the ReMindCare and TAU groups were found in the number of relapses, hospitalizations, and visits to urgent care units, with each showing benefits for the app. Only 20% (12/59) of patients from the ReMindCare group had a relapse, while 58% (18/31) of the TAU patients had one or more relapses (chi(2) =13.7, P=.001). Moreover, ReMindCare patients had fewer visits to urgent care units (chi(2) =7.4, P=.006) and fewer hospitalizations than TAU patients (chi(2) =4.6, P=.03). The mean of days using the app was 352.2 (SD 191.2; min/max: 18-594), and the mean of engagement was 84.5 (SD 16.04). Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first eHealth intervention that has preliminarily proven its benefits in the real-world treatment of patients with early psychosis., This study was supported by the Sanitary Research Institute of the University Clinic Hospital and the Mental Health Networking Biomedical Centre. It was also supported by the Generalitat Valenciana and the Program for Scientific Research, Technological Development, and Innovation in the Generalitat Valenciana of the European Union (2017/9830). It was also supported by grants from the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2016/082, PROMETEO/2020/024), Carlos III Health Institute (PI13/00447; PI17/00402), and European Union through the European Regional Development Fund.

This article analyzes the possibilities of financing from non-university resources of library projects of technical universities in Poland in the financial perspective of the European Union for the years 2014-2020. The library projects serve to implement the strategy of libraries in the most important areas of their development as defined by Polish technical universities in strategic, long-term programme documents. The system supporting the implementation of development strategies and projects in academic libraries consists of four public sector pillars. The institutions at national and regional level, creating this system, offer, through specific area programmes, a high level of support ranging from 80% to 100% of eligible costs. Individual programmes, financed from European funds and from the state budget, enable the implementation of project development strategies of repository and digitalization character, promotion and dissemination and increasing innovative teaching and digital competences. The inclusion in the development strategies of Polish scientific libraries of the need to implement projects in the most important areas of their activity should ensure external sources of financing for such projects from the state budget for science, the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund in the next EU financial perspective., У цій статті проаналізовано можливості фінансування позауніверситетських бібліотечних проєктів технічних університетів Польщі у фінансовій перспективі Європейського Союзу на 2014-2020 роки. Бібліотечні проєкти служать реалізації бібліотечних стратегій у найважливіших сферах їх розвитку, визначених польськими технічними університетами у стратегічних, довгострокових програмних документах. Система, що підтримує реалізацію стратегій та проєктів розвитку в академічних бібліотеках, складається з чотирьох стовпів державного сектору. Інституції національного та регіонального рівня, які складають цю систему, пропонують за допомогою конкретних програм, що стосуються місцевості, високий рівень підтримки, що становить від 80% до 100% прийнятних витрат. Окремі програми, що фінансуються з європейських фондів та з державного бюджету, дозволяють реалізувати стратегії розвитку проєктів сховища та оцифрування, просування та розповсюдження, а також підвищення інноваційних дидактичних та цифрових компетенцій. Враховуючи необхідність реалізації проєктів у найважливіших сферах їх діяльності у стратегіях розвитку польських наукових бібліотек, слід забезпечити зовнішні джерела фінансування таких проєктів з державного бюджету на науку, Європейський соціальний фонд та Європейський фонд регіонального розвитку у наступній фінансовій перспективі Європейського Союзу.

Dothistroma needle blight (DNB) is a serious disease of the Pinaceae, mainlyPinusspecies, caused by the fungiDothistroma septosporumandD. pini. Both species are regarded as invasive forest pathogens worldwide, with rising incidence in central and northern Europe over the last three decades. In this work, 29 sites were investigated between 2013 and 2015 in south-western Turkey. Morphological examination of needles confirmed DNB infection (i.e.,Dothistromaconidiospores observed) at 18 sites, and a total of 108Dothistromasp. isolates were obtained from 11 of the sites. Host age seemed to be an important factor in both occurrence and severity of DNB inPinus brutiaforests. Continuous rainy days, especially in December, may increase severity of disease; however, extreme rain events may reduce available conidiospores on plant tissues or in the air. Species-specific mating type primers showed that all isolates wereD. septosporum;D.piniwas not detected. The mating type ratio was close to 1:1, indicating sexual recombination was occurring. Eleven microsatellite markers revealed 59 unique multilocus haplotypes (MLHs) among the 73 isolates originating from different conidiomata. The majority of MLHs were represented by a single isolate (n = 52) and only one MLH was shared between two localities. Analyses showed high genetic diversity, isolation-by-distance, and clear population clusters. These findings suggest thatD.septosporumis well established in south-western Turkey and is probably not a recent introduction.

In today's world, new technologies are being used for the teaching‐learning process in the classroom. Their use to support learning can provide significant advantages for the teaching‐learning process and have potential benefits for students, as many of these technologies are a part of the work life of many current professions. The aim of this study is to analyse the use of innovative technologies for engineering and science education after examining the data obtained from students in their learning process and experiences. The study has been focused on computational geographic information systems, which allow access to and management of large volumes of information and data, and on the assessment of this tool as a basis for a suitable methodology to enhance the teaching‐learning process, taking into account the great social impact of big data. The results allow identifying the main advantages, opportunities, and drawbacks of using these technological tools for educational purposes. Finally, a set of initiatives has been proposed to complement the teaching activity and to improve user experience in the educational field. This study was supported by the Spanish Research Agency and the European Regional Development Fund under project CloudDriver4Industry TIN2017‐89266‐R.

[EN] Rolling noise emitted by railway wheels is a problem that affects human health and limits the expansion of the railway network. It is caused by the wheel vibration due to the wheelrail contact force, and it is important in almost all the vehicle velocity range. The minimization of noise radiation associated with changes on the wheel web is discussed in this work, focusing on potential shape modifications in existing wheels in the form of a perforation distribution over the web. Such a post-manufacturing technique is a cost-effective solution that can be performed in a relatively short term. The implemented objective function is directly related to the overall radiated sound power, which is minimized using a genetic algorithmbased optimizer. In the acoustic model, radiation efficiencies are approximated to unity, the accuracy of this assumption being also studied in the work. The results reflect that an optimized distribution of perforations on the web of a railway wheel can reduce the total sound power level, by about 5 dB(A) and 2 dB(A) for curved and straight web, respectively. The mitigation of the radiated sound power is due to the fact that certain wheel vibration modes are modified and shifted to other frequencies where they are less excited. Finally, the relevance of the cross-sectional curvature of the web is explored by studying two different web geometries, suggesting that it can strongly influence the noise mitigation effects of the perforation pattern., The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades - Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, European Regional Development Fund (project TRA2017-84701-R), and Conselleria d'Educacio, Investigacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana, project Prometeo/2016/007).

This chapter aims at presenting how survival analysis methods can be used to study topics related to entrepreneurship. The availability of data that allow the identification of how long a subject is in a state, represents an opportunity to study transitions from one state to another taking into account the length of each spell. In this chapter I use the example of the time that a startup firm takes to leave a business incubator and go through the econometric specification of a continuous time parametric model applied to the study of transitions into multiple possible destinations. I also discuss some alternatives to this specification, such as the Cox Proportional Hazards model and discrete time duration models., This work was carried out within the funding with COMPETE reference no POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006683 (UID/ECO/03182/2013), with the FCT/MEC (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.)’s financial support through national funding and by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the Operational Programme on “Competitiveness and Internationalization”, COMPETE 2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement

The supply of drinking water is one of the major concerns in semi-arid and arid climates, mainly in developing countries. The present study reviews the situation of the water supply in a West African coast country, the archipelago of Cape Verde, with focus on the most populous island (Santiago), regarding the rate of public coverage and the water quality. As main insights, the research indicates that at Santiago Island only 54% of the population has con- nection to the public network, while 24% uses wells, springs and other potentially non-potable sources. The region of São Domingos is one of the most critical, with only 6.5% of public supply, justifying the assessment of the water quality used by this population. With regard to water quality, the results of this study indicate that natural and anthropic factors are contributing to degradation of the water resources, with salinity, chloride, nitrates, and nitrites as major concerning pollutants. The insufficiency of the public supply in this island could be a reflection of the situation in other arid re- gions of Africa. Though the recent advances it is vital to continue or even increase with the interna- tional cooperation to provide for adequate water supply infrastructures., Nemias Moniz Goncalves avails to acknowledge Gulbenkian Scholarship Service from FCG (CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN FOUNDATION), for the granted individual scholarship, under the program of Postgraduate Scholarships for students of PALOP and East Timor - Stimulating research and professional appreciation, process Nº. 139758. The FCG has been an indispensable support in carrying out all academic activities. This work was also supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, based on COMPETE 2020 (Programa Operacional da Competitividade e Internacionalização) - project ICT (UID/GEO/04683/2013) with reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690