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In recent years, the scientific community has stressed the need to invest in the first 1,000 days of life - the time spanning between conception and the 2nd birthday - because it is during this period that the foundations of health are laid and whose effects will be present throughout the life and may influence the next generation. Taking this into account, in 2013 the National Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CCM) of the Italian Ministry of Health promoted and financed a project to test a surveillance system of the main determinants of health concerning the child between the conception period and the 2nd years of life which are included in the National Programme "GenitoriPiù": folic acid before and during pregnancy, abstention from tobacco and alcohol during pregnancy and lactation, breastfeeding, infant sleep position, vaccination attitude, and early reading. The Project, started in January 2014 and ended in August 2016, has piloted the design, testing, and evaluation of the surveillance system with the view to national extension and the repeatability over time. The surveillance system has been designed to collect data through a questionnaire compiled by mothers in vaccination centres, in order to produce indicators which will enable territorial and intertemporal comparisons to be made. The project has shown the feasibility of this system, identifying favourable conditions and possible difficulties, and its ability to collect important information on children's health.

The first Special Observation Period (SOP1) field campaign of the HyMeX (HYdrological cycle in the Mediterranean EXperiment) program was held in fall 2012 and was devoted to the investigation of heavy precipitation and floods in the Western Mediterranean. Both the Italian research and operational meteorological communities actively participated by providing a valuable contribution through the organization of an ad hoc national Operational Centre. The paper presents an overview of this participation, resulting in a fruitful multidisciplinary experience able to build a bridge between academia, researchers, forecasters, end-users and decision makers. The benefits provided by the wide national involvement and the consequent possible national impacts and progress are discussed within the context of the complex organization of meteorology in Italy.

A general trend of scrub encroachment and natural forest expansion (old-field succession) has been occurring in the past fifty years in Mediterranean mountain areas. While this phenomenon enhances a series of ecological processes and environmental services, it may represent a threat for biodiversity conservation when occurring on high nature value (HNV) extensive farmland. These open areas, created by traditional farming systems, have been recognized as a critically important European biodiversity resource. Understanding the drivers of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC) and their implications on the dynamics of forest and HNV farmland habitats plays a crucial role in biodiversity conservation in protected areas. In this perspective, the case study here presented aims to model recent (1989-2008) LUCC in a National Park of the Central Apennines (Italy) and to produce a mid-term forecast (2008-2020). In the past twenty years, 57% of the land uptake by shrubland and 46% by forest has been occurring on former HNV farmland. Mid-term projections (2008-2020) confirm further HNV farmland decline. Localization of HNV farmland habitats vulnerable to change is a valuable decision-making tool to tradeoff in protected areas the conservation of traditional landscapes with the increase of forest and shrubland areas. In this perspective, concrete socio-economical and silvicultural measures are outlined to preserve these socially and economically-fragile open habitats.

Marc Lipsitch and colleagues use complementary data from two US cities, Milwaukee and New York City, to assess the severity of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza in the United States., Background Accurate measures of the severity of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza (pH1N1) are needed to assess the likely impact of an anticipated resurgence in the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Severity has been difficult to measure because jurisdictions with large numbers of deaths and other severe outcomes have had too many cases to assess the total number with confidence. Also, detection of severe cases may be more likely, resulting in overestimation of the severity of an average case. We sought to estimate the probabilities that symptomatic infection would lead to hospitalization, ICU admission, and death by combining data from multiple sources. Methods and Findings We used complementary data from two US cities: Milwaukee attempted to identify cases of medically attended infection whether or not they required hospitalization, while New York City focused on the identification of hospitalizations, intensive care admission or mechanical ventilation (hereafter, ICU), and deaths. New York data were used to estimate numerators for ICU and death, and two sources of data—medically attended cases in Milwaukee or self-reported influenza-like illness (ILI) in New York—were used to estimate ratios of symptomatic cases to hospitalizations. Combining these data with estimates of the fraction detected for each level of severity, we estimated the proportion of symptomatic patients who died (symptomatic case-fatality ratio, sCFR), required ICU (sCIR), and required hospitalization (sCHR), overall and by age category. Evidence, prior information, and associated uncertainty were analyzed in a Bayesian evidence synthesis framework. Using medically attended cases and estimates of the proportion of symptomatic cases medically attended, we estimated an sCFR of 0.048% (95% credible interval [CI] 0.026%–0.096%), sCIR of 0.239% (0.134%–0.458%), and sCHR of 1.44% (0.83%–2.64%). Using self-reported ILI, we obtained estimates approximately 7–9× lower. sCFR and sCIR appear to be highest in persons aged 18 y and older, and lowest in children aged 5–17 y. sCHR appears to be lowest in persons aged 5–17; our data were too sparse to allow us to determine the group in which it was the highest. Conclusions These estimates suggest that an autumn–winter pandemic wave of pH1N1 with comparable severity per case could lead to a number of deaths in the range from considerably below that associated with seasonal influenza to slightly higher, but with the greatest impact in children aged 0–4 and adults 18–64. These estimates of impact depend on assumptions about total incidence of infection and would be larger if incidence of symptomatic infection were higher or shifted toward adults, if viral virulence increased, or if suboptimal treatment resulted from stress on the health care system; numbers would decrease if the total proportion of the population symptomatically infected were lower than assumed. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary, Editors' Summary Background Every winter, millions of people catch influenza—a viral infection of the airways—and about half a million people die as a result. In the US alone, an average of 36,000 people are thought to die from influenza-related causes every year. These seasonal epidemics occur because small but frequent changes in the virus mean that an immune response produced one year provides only partial protection against influenza the next year. Occasionally, influenza viruses emerge that are very different and to which human populations have virtually no immunity. These viruses can start global epidemics (pandemics) that kill millions of people. Experts have been warning for some time that an influenza pandemic is long overdue and in, March 2009, the first cases of influenza caused by a new virus called pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (pH1N1; swine flu) occurred in Mexico. The virus spread rapidly and on 11 June 2009, the World Health Organization declared that a global pandemic of pH1N1 influenza was underway. By the beginning of November 2009, more than 6,000 people had died from pH1N1 influenza. Why Was This Study Done? With the onset of autumn—drier weather and the return of children to school help the influenza virus to spread—pH1N1 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the Northern Hemisphere have greatly increased. Although public-health officials have been preparing for this resurgence of infection, they cannot be sure of its impact on human health without knowing more about the severity of pH1N1 infections. The severity of an infection can be expressed as a case-fatality ratio (CFR; the proportion of cases that result in death), as a case-hospitalization ratio (CHR; the proportion of cases that result in hospitalization), and as a case-intensive care ratio (CIR; the proportion of cases that require treatment in an intensive care unit). Because so many people have been infected with pH1N1 since it emerged, the numbers of cases and deaths caused by pH1N1 infection are not known accurately so these ratios cannot be easily calculated. In this study, the researchers estimate the severity of pH1N1 influenza in the US between April and July 2009 by combining data on pH1N1 infections from several sources using a statistical approach known as Bayesian evidence synthesis. What Did the Researchers Do and Find? By using data on medically attended and hospitalized cases of pH1N1 infection in Milwaukee and information from New York City on hospitalizations, intensive care use, and deaths, the researchers estimate that the proportion of US cases with symptoms that died (the sCFR) during summer 2009 was 0.048%. That is, about 1 in 2,000 people who had symptoms of pH1N1 infection died. The “credible interval” for this sCFR, the range of values between which the “true” sCFR is likely to lie, they report, is 0.026%–0.096% (between 1 in 4,000 and 1 in 1,000 deaths for every symptomatic case). About 1 in 400 symptomatic cases required treatment in intensive care, they estimate, and about 1 in 70 symptomatic cases required hospital admission. When the researchers used a different approach to estimate the total number of symptomatic cases—based on New Yorkers' self-reported incidence of influenza-like-illness from a telephone survey—their estimates of pH1N1 infection severity were 7- to 9-fold lower. Finally, they report that the sCFR and the sCIR were highest in people aged 18 or older and lowest in children aged 5–17 years. What Do These Findings Mean? Many uncertainties (for example, imperfect detection and reporting) can affect estimates of influenza severity. Even so, the findings of this study suggest that an autumn–winter pandemic wave of pH1N1 will have a death toll only slightly higher than or considerably lower than that caused by seasonal influenza in an average year, provided pH1N1 continues to behave as it did during the summer. Similarly, the estimated burden on hospitals and intensive care facilities ranges from somewhat higher than in a normal influenza season to considerably lower. The findings of this study also suggest that, unlike seasonal influenza, which kills mainly elderly adults, a high proportion of deaths from pH1N1infection will occur in nonelderly adults, a shift in age distribution that has been seen in previous pandemics. With these estimates in hand and with continued close monitoring of the pandemic, public-health officials should now be in a better position to plan effective strategies to deal with the pH1N1 pandemic. Additional Information Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000207. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides information about influenza for patients and professionals, including specific information on pandemic H1N1 (2009) influenza Flu.gov, a US government Web site, provides access to information on H1N1, avian and pandemic influenza The World Health Organization provides information on seasonal influenza and has detailed information on pandemic H1N1 (2009) influenza (in several languages) The UK Health Protection Agency provides information on pandemic influenza and on pandemic H1N1 (2009) influenza More information for patients about H1N1 influenza is available through Choices, an information resource provided by the UK National Health Service

The sub-glacial Plinian explosive eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano on May 2011 is analyzed and quantitatively interpreted by using satellite passive microwave observations. The prevailing southerly winds stretched the erupted plume toward the Artic pole, thus preventing the ash cloud to move towards continental Europe and threatening the airline traffic (differently from the less explosive Eyjafjll eruption on April and May 2010). Satellite microwave radiometric imagery is investigated to show the potential contribution and limitations to the understanding and modeling of explosive volcanic ash eruptions. We show the correlation of spaceborne microwave brightness temperatures with the ash columnar content derived from ground-based C-band radar retrievals. Microphysical sensitivity of satellite microwave brightness temperatures to the eruption plume fine and coarse ash suggests their exploitation in synergy with satellite thermal infrared radiometer and ground-based microwave radar observations.

A field campaign was carried out in the framework of the Mitigation of Electromagnetic Transmission errors induced by Atmospheric Water Vapour Effects (METAWAVE) project sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the accuracy of currently available sources of atmospheric columnar integrated water vapor measurements. The METAWAVE campaign took place in Rome, Italy, for the 2-week period from 19 September to 4 October 2008. The collected dataset includes observations from ground-based microwave radiometers and Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, from meteorological numerical model analysis and predictions, from balloon-borne in-situ radiosoundings, as well as from spaceborne infrared radiometers. These different sources of integrated water vapor (IWV) observations have been analyzed and compared to quantify the accuracy and investigate the potential for mitigating IWV-related electromagnetic path delay errors in Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) imaging. The results, which include a triple collocation analysis accounting for errors inherently present in every IWV measurements, are valid not only to InSAR but also to any other application involving water vapor sensing. The present analysis concludes that the requirements for mitigating the effects of turbulent water vapor component into InSAR are significantly higher than the accuracy of the instruments analyzed here. Nonetheless, information on the IWV vertical stratification from satellite observations, numerical models, and GPS receivers may provide valuable aid to suppress the long spatial wavelength (>20 km) component of the atmospheric delay, and thus significantly improve the performances of InSAR phase unwrapping techniques.

The sub-glacial Plinian explosive eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano on May 2011 was continuously monitored by the Keflavík C-band weather radar, located at a distance of about 260 km from the volcano vent. This work provides an analysis and quantitative interpretation by using these ground-based weather radar data and the Volcanic Ash Radar Retrieval (VARR) physically-based technique. The VARR methodology, herein briefly summarized, was applied to available radar time series to estimate the volume, mass and the plume maximum height, every 5 minutes. Deposited ash at ground was also retrieved from radar data by empirically reconstructing the vertical profile of radar reflectivity and estimating the near-surface ash fallout. The obtained results establish a further step towards the assessment of the VARR algorithm as an effective approach in the field volcanic ash cloud radar remote sensing.

This volume presents a collection of selected articles based on presentations at the seventh edition of the International Summer School on Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ISSAOS), annually organized by the University of L'Aquila, Italy. This seventh edition, held during September 4-7, 2007 in the amazing venue of the medieval Castle of the city of L'Aquila, focused on "Integrated Ground-Based Observing System Applications for Climate, Meteorology, and Civil Protection." The goal of ISSAOS 2007 was to bring together experts and young researchers in ground-based remote sensing to discuss the need for integrated systems and their contribution to a variety of applications, including weather forecast, meteorology, climatology, natural hazard monitoring, and transportation support. Important questions related to weather, climate, etc., cannot be answered without a broad view of the atmospheric processes and their mutual links. Ground-based remote sensing provides useful tools to help understanding these processes by real measurements with known error characteristics. The user needs for ground-based remote sensing observations were reviewed at the first COST 720 workshop, incidentally held in L'Aquila in 2002. Of course, all observing systems have strengths and weakness, but none meet the breakthrough levels of user requirements for all aspects. The solution to these requirements could be best met by a composite of different observing systems.