Publications

COST Action 621 ‘Groundwater management of coastal karstic aquifers’ was set up in April 1997, with the aim of increasing the knowledge required to establish criteria for improving groundwater use in karst aquifers and for recovering groundwater resources in overexploited and salinised aquifers.

The COST 917 Action ‘Biogenic Amines in Food’ has been running for 5 years, from September 1996 to September 2001. Six volumes of COST 917 proceedings have been published. Volume I deal with ‘Biologically Active Amines in Transgenic Plants’. The ‘Metabolic Effects of Biologically Active Amines in Food’ are discussed in Volume II. The two topics in Volume III are ‘Biologically Active Amines in Food Processing and Amines Produced by Bacteria’ and ‘Polyamines and Tumour Growth’. Volume IV contains contributions to the first General Workshop, in which all Working Groups participated. Volume V contains papers presented at the second meetings on ‘Polyamines and Tu mour Growth’ and ‘Biologically Active Amines in Food Processing and Amines Produced by Bacteria’. In Volume VI are papers from the meeting on ‘Biologically Active Amines: Metabolism and Physiology and the third meeting devoted to Biologically Active Amines in food processing and Amines Produced by Bacteria.
The contents of Volumes I-VI are in Appendix II. This, the last volume in the series, contains papers presented at the final meeting of COST Action 917, ‘Biologically Active Amines in Food’ held in Krems, Austria, from October 10th to October 14th, 2001. The sessions included the second workshop of Working Group 1, ‘Biologically Active Amines in Transgenic Plants’; the fourth workshop of Working Group 2, ‘Polyaminesand Tumour Growth’; the fourth workshop of Working Group 3, ‘Physiology and Metabolism of biologically active amines’; the sixth workshop of Working Group 4 ‘Biologically Active Amines in Food Processing and Amines Produced by Bacteria’.
Biogenic amines in food can be important indicators of food spoilage and food safety. Some foods may contain biogenic amines at levels that may cause acute food intoxication.
The Management Committee of COST Action 917 has collected data from participating laboratories on the amine content of foods and this data is included as Appendix I in this volume.

This book, as the outcome of the COST-728/NetFAM workshop, focuses on the follow­ing main topics: 1) on-line coupled meteorology-chemistry modelling with two-way feedbacks, 2) off-line coupled modelling and interfaces, 3) validation and case studies including air quality related episodes, and 4) integration of atmospheric chemical transport (ACT) models with numerical weather prediction (NWP).

This book is one of the first attempts to give an overall look on such integrated meso-meteorology and chemistry modelling approach. It reviews the current situation with the on-line and off-line coupling of mesoscale meteorological and ACT models worldwide as well as discusses advantages and shortcomings, best practices, and gives recommendations for on-line and off-line coupling of NWP and ACT models, implementation strategy for different feedback mechanisms, direct and indirect effects of aerosols and advanced interfaces between both types of models. The book is oriented towards numerical weather prediction and air quality modelling communities.

Research in warble fly infestation.

The COST Action C11, ‘Green structure and urban planning’, was launched at the beginning of 2000. Fifteen countries were involved in this action and about 40 delegates and experts participated. COST Action C11 belongs to the ‘Urban civil engineering’ domain of the COST programme. The main objective of this action was to address researchers, planners and practitioners about the multitude of roles played by the city’s green structure. In order to progress in its work, COST Action C11 was organised in three working groups: one on the ecological approach of green structure, the second on the ‘human issues’; and a third dealing with the policy aspects. The final seminar was open to ‘key-note speakers’ who could add their own contribution to this report and, to conclude, a kind of synthesis stresses some questions still worth of reflection.

This book presents the results of the studies on satellite data availability, methods and challenges for the assessment of climate change and variability impacts on agriculture, which were obtained by working group 2.1 in the COST Action 734. The main objective of the Action was the evaluation of possible impacts from climate change and variability on agriculture and the assessment of critical thresholds for various European areas. Secondary objectives were: the collection and review of existing agroclimatic indices and simulation models, to assess hazard impacts on various European agricultural areas relating hazards to climatic conditions; building climate scenarios for the next few decades; the definition of harmonised criteria to evaluate the impacts of climate change and variability on agriculture and the definition of warning systems guidelines. This book specifically focuses on the findings of working group 2.1 who addressed remote sensing including the evaluation and assessment of the use of satellite data for agro-climate research, and in particular their integration into high-quality, globally-integrated climate products.