Publications

This open access book presents established methods of structural health monitoring (SHM) and discusses their technological merit in the current aerospace environment. While the aerospace industry aims for weight reduction to improve fuel efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and to decrease maintenance time and operating costs, aircraft structures are often designed and built heavier than required in order to accommodate unpredictable failure. A way to overcome this approach is the use of SHM systems to detect the presence of defects. This book covers all major contemporary aerospace-relevant SHM methods, from the basics of each method to the various defect types that SHM is required to detect to discussion of signal processing developments alongside considerations of aerospace safety requirements. It will be of interest to professionals in industry and academic researchers alike, as well as engineering students.

Alice and Bob embark on a quantum “escape game” adventure! They discover some mysterious aspects of superconductivity, this fascinating quantum property of solid matter at low temperatures. A novel for teens aged 13 and up.

The book is available in French:

Alice et Bob se lancent dans l’aventure d’un “escape game” quantique ! Ils découvrent certains aspects un peu mystérieux de la supraconductivité, cette propriété quantique fascinante de la matière solide à basse température. Un roman pour les ados à partir de 13 ans.

This book collects all original materials produced during the Second Training School of the COST Action CA18110 Underground4value, held in September 2021 at the University of Murcia (Murcia, ES). In these pages, the reader can experience how a real committed group of young and talented trainees, organised in research groups, faced such a challenge of penetrating theoretical and methodological contents and then operating them to produce their case-study storytelling. This second handbook, structured in three parts, tries to catch all this, not replying the already published lectures, but giving space to the case-studies’ description and to the research groups’ work. In these pages, the research teams, composed by tutors and trainees, emerge as the real protagonists, by providing a fertile ground to create alternative options for the selected case-studies – the Old White Marble Quarries of Paros (GR), the Ayia Napa Monastery (CY), the Dolmens of Antelas and Carapito (PT), and the Underground City of Camerano (IT).  Through their eyes, free from any predefined design and not tied to the local communities’ expectations, the reader can penetrate the logic path, in some way connected to the Strategic Transition Practice (STP) approach, which created the pre-conditions for the options’ definition.  Following the First Handbook orientation, this new volume aims to make available to the scientific community and the general public an original product based on scientific comparison, real studies, community experiences, and creativity. Furthermore, in line with Underground4value philosophy, the final goal of this Handbook is to promote Underground Built Heritage as a valuable resource to celebrate and preserve, realising its full potential to support local communities’ development.

This volume brings together a body of expertise gathered within ENTAN—European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network (www.entan.org), a European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action dedicated to analysing the concept of Non-Territorial Autonomy (NTA) and its potential to accommodate the needs of different ethno-cultural and ethnolinguistic communities within a single state framework. The present volume comprises a selection of 20 peer-reviewed papers originally presented at the Second ENTAN Conference, hosted by the Institute for minority Studies, Centre for Social Science in Budapest, on 24–25 September 2021. The Second Conference examined how the various NTA models have been implemented and contribute to the effective representation and participation of minorities in public life. It focused on various activities, policies and institutional structures in diverse contexts that can be considered as forms of NTA. The contributions included in this volume offer a critical eye not only on the decision of states to opt for and even constitutionally entrench NTA arrangements but also on the extent to which such arrangements meet minority demands and mitigate territorial and separatist aspirations, ethnic conflict, discrimination and socioeconomic exclusion.

This volume brings together a body of expertise gathered within ENTAN—European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network (www.entan.org), a European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action dedicated to analysing the concept of Non-Territorial Autonomy (NTA) and its potential to accommodate the needs of different ethno-cultural and ethnolinguistic communities within a single state framework. The present volume comprises a selection of peer-reviewed papers originally presented at the Third ENTAN Conference, hosted by Ovidius University, Constanţa, on 13–14 May 2022. 

The book ‘Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for Monitoring Soil, Vegetation, and Riverine Environments’ is the result of five years of intense activities carried out within the context of the COST Action HARMONIOUS (CA16219). The Action stimulated the participation of more than 200 researchers and technicians from 36 European and non-European countries with the intention is to promote monitoring strategies, establish harmonized monitoring practices, and transfer most recent advances on UAS methodologies to others within a global network.

The aim of the book is to share the experience gained within the HARMONIOUS COST Action providing clear guidelines for all of those that are willing to approach the use of UAS to enhance the description of soil-water-plant processes. The book includes guidelines, technical advices, and practical experiences to support researchers, instructors, and practitioners in increasing monitoring efficiency with the help of UAS.

Why would kidney disease affect the brain?

This special issue is a collaborative work which has been published in a high-impact journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation (NDT). In this issue, there are six reviews on current topics linking the brain and kidney.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a complex and potentially fatal illness affecting all organs and altering many fundamental physiological parameters and processes, such as plasma volume, electrolytes and acid-base balance, hormone and protein metabolism. Thirty to 60% of advanced CKD patients have been found to have impaired cognition. The most frequently diagnosed problem is Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), which is characterized by signs of neurological injury and cognitive dysfunction.

Although many theories have emerged as to why kidney disease affects the brain and causes cognitive impairment, the aetiology has not been fully explained. To study this brain-kidney relationship, we set up a multidisciplinary approach and the CONNECT network. CONNECT (Cognitive decline in Nephro-Neurology European Cooperative Target Action) was established and financed through the COST Action program. As described in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), CONNECT is comprised of 5 working groups and has the objective of filling the gap in our knowledge of brain-kidney interactions. It includes clinical nephrologists and neurologists, scientists with pre-clinical expertise in the field of nephrology and neuroscience, and scientists with knowledge and experience of clinical trials, epidemiology and data science. With the collaboration of the different expert working groups, we have already published on these topics in this special issue:

Present and future of CONNECT: a new and compelling project of modern medicine/ Acidosis, cognitive dysfunction and motor impairments in patients with kidney disease/ Neuropeptide Y as a risk factor for cardiorenal disease and cognitive dysfunction in chronic kidney disease: translational opportunities and challenges/ Cognitive disorders in patients with chronic kidney disease: specificities of clinical assessment/ Chronic kidney disease and neurological disorders: are uraemic toxins the missing piece of the puzzle?/ Brain dysfunction in tubular and tubulointerstitial kidney diseases/ Albuminuria as a risk factor for mild cognitive impairment and dementia—what is the evidence?

We highlight and emphasize that a healthy kidney is a healthy brain!

COST Association commissioned Technopolis to conduct an Impact Assessment Study on short-term mobility, which was carried out between March and October 2022. This study assessed 44 Short-term scientific missions (STSMs) of diverse characteristics and duration, through interviewing the researchers involved in the research stays.

The study found that STSMs are utilised for a diverse range of activities and goals, including discussions on research topics, networking opportunities between the grantee and researchers at the host institute, collaborative research, learning new methods, and using the host institution’s research infrastructure. The study also observed that, although STSMs predominantly contribute to the individual beneficiary’s work, they can have impact for several parties involved

Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) is crucial for biodiversity conservation. Although it should be assessed by monitoring the diversity of multiple taxonomic groups, most current SFM criteria and indicators account only for trees or consider indirect biodiversity proxies. Several projects performed multi-taxon sampling to investigate the effects of forest management on biodiversity, but through heterogeneous sampling approaches that hamper the identification of general trends, and the broad-scale inference for designing SFM.

The COST Action BOTTOMS-UP (CA18207) established a network of researchers involved in 41 projects on European forest multi-taxon biodiversity across 13 European countries. 

The book includes an overview of the sampling approaches to multi-taxon biodiversity, standing trees and deadwood in the form of an operational handbook for nine different taxonomic groups and for the sampling of standing trees and lying deadwood. For each of these forest components, we provide two standards that differ in spatial scale and effort, and give specific instructions for the comparability across standards, taxonomic groups and studies. 

This handbook derives from an effort of networking and synthesis and represents a pragmatic synthesis and an important step forward to direct monitoring of forest biodiversity, in Europe and elsewhere.