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Energy communities—lessons learnt, challenges, and policy recommendations
Get PDFEnergy communities (ECs) are considered important in transitioning the energy system. They are of particular interest due to their potential to empower citizens and support a more just energy transition. However, experiences from ECs remain limited and vary across countries, thus raising questions on potential future advancements. In this article, we explore experiences from ECs in several European countries to inspire discussions on further evolvement and improvements. Insights into lessons learned and key challenges within the selected countries have been collected and analysed, and recommendations for advancing these efforts are provided to policy makers. The results indicate that ECs are making progress in producing and sharing renewable energy while supporting a more just energy transition by engaging a variety of actors within local communities. The challenges, however, often stem from limited national support and difficulties in fully achieving diversity within engaged local communities. The recommendations stress the importance of building on early learnings in community energy and further strengthening local anchoring to achieve a just transition. This in turn, generates fertile ground for discussions on how to localize energy policy and reinforce a multi-level policy approach beyond the European and national levels.</p
The interplay between symptom deterioration of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic heart failure
Get PDFBackground: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic heart failure (CHF) commonly co-exist and share symptoms, which complicates disease management. It is unclear how COPD and CHF deterioration inter(re)act. Objective: This study aimed to assess the interplay between COPD and CHF deterioration on group and individual level. Methods: Total daily COPD- and CHF-symptom intensity scores (SIS) were calculated based on increased symptoms of COPD (dyspnea, sputum purulence and color, coughing, wheezing, fever) and CHF (sudden weight increase, swelling, nocturnal dyspnea), as reported by patients in one-year daily symptom diaries. The COPD-CHF interplay was assessed visually and statistically (on group and individual level) by mixed models. Results: From a multicenter trial (N = 201), 33 patients with COPD and CHF (72.4 ± 7.8 years, 24 men (72.7 %)) were included. On group level, increased CHF-SIS positively predicted next day's COPD-SIS (p = 0.02). However, on individual level, the direction and strength of the associations between CHF-SIS and subsequent COPD-SIS varied substantially. Vice versa, increased COPD-SIS also predicted next day's CHF-SIS on group level (p < 0.001). On individual level, the direction of the associations varied less, although strength differed from negligible to strongly positive. Conclusions: On group level, CHF deterioration predicts an increase in next day's COPD symptom score, as well as vice versa. Individual-level associations reinforce the group-level results for COPD provoking CHF symptoms, but not for CHF provoking COPD symptoms. The COPD-CHF interplay should be monitored and, if present, acted upon to optimize patient disease management.</p
Monitoring and modeling the soil-plant system toward understanding soil health
Get PDFThe soil health assessment has evolved from focusing primarily on agricultural productivity to an integrated evaluation of soil biota and biotic processes that impact soil properties. Consequently, soil health assessment has shifted from a predominantly physicochemical approach to incorporating ecological, biological and molecular microbiology indicators. This shift enables a comprehensive exploration of soil microbial community properties and their responses to environmental changes arising from climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Despite the increasing availability of soil health indicators (physical, chemical, and biological) and data, a holistic mechanistic linkage has not yet been fully established between indicators and soil functions across multiple spatiotemporal scales. This article reviews the state-of-the-art of soil health monitoring, focusing on understanding how soil-microbiome-plant processes contribute to feedback mechanisms and causes of changes in soil properties, as well as the impact these changes have on soil functions. Furthermore, we survey the opportunities afforded by the soil-plant digital twin approach, an integrative framework that amalgamates process-based models, Earth Observation data, data assimilation, and physics-informed machine learning, to achieve a nuanced comprehension of soil health. This review delineates the prospective trajectory for monitoring soil health by embracing a digital twin approach to systematically observe and model the soil-plant system. We further identify gaps and opportunities, and provide perspectives for future research for an enhanced understanding of the intricate interplay between soil properties, soil hydrological processes, soil-plant hydraulics, soil microbiome, and landscape genomics.</p
HESS Opinions:Towards a common vision for the future of hydrological observatories
Get PDFThe Unsolved Problems in Hydrology (UPH) initiative has emphasized the need to establish networks of multi-decadal hydrological observatories to gain a deep understanding of the complex hydrologic processes occurring within diverse environmental conditions. The already existing monitoring infrastructures have provided an enormous amount of hydrometeorological data, facilitating detailed insights into the causal mechanisms of hydrological processes, the testing of scientific theories and hypotheses, and the revelation of the physical laws governing catchment behavior. Yet, hydrological monitoring programs have often produced limited outcomes due to the intermittent availability of financial resources and the substantial efforts required to operate observatories and conduct comparative studies to advance previous findings. Recently, some initiatives have emerged that aim to coordinate data acquisition and hypothesis testing to facilitate an efficient cross-site synthesis of findings. To this end, a common vision and practical data management solutions need to be developed. This opinion paper provocatively discusses two potential endmembers of a future hydrological observatory (HO) network based on a given hypothesized community budget: a comprehensive set of moderately instrumented observatories or, alternatively, a small number of highly instrumented supersites. A network of moderately instrumented monitoring sites would provide a broad spatial coverage across the major pedoclimatic regions by supporting cross-site synthesis of the lumped hydrological response (e.g., rainfall-runoff relationship, Budyko analysis) across diverse continental landscapes. However, the moderate instrumentation at each site may hamper an in-depth understanding of complex hydrological processes. In contrast, a small number of extensively instrumented research sites would enable community-based experiments in an unprecedented manner, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding of complex, non-linear processes modulated by scale-dependent feedback and multiscale spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Lumping resources has proven to be an effective strategy in other geosciences, e.g., research vessels in oceanography and drilling programs in geology. On the downside, a potential limitation of this approach is that a few catchments will not be representative of all pedoclimatic regions, necessitating the consideration of generalization issues. A discussion on the relative merits and limitations of these two visions regarding HOs is presented to build consensus on the optimal path for the hydrological community to address the UPH in the coming decades.</p
Beyond CVEs: Mapping Weaknesses in Unstructured Threat Intelligence Text
No full textIn real-world cyberattacks, adversaries frequently exploit a combination of vulnerabilities, bugs, and misconfigurations to compromise systems. To systematically analyze the root causes behind these issues, the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) framework provides a standardized taxonomy of software weaknesses.While vulnerability databases are central to cataloging known issues, many security-relevant descriptions first appear in informal sources such as blog posts, CTI reports, and social media. Although these sources predominantly offer broader cybersecurity insights, they occasionally yield details that may indicate underlying weaknesses not captured in formal databases.We propose a two-step approach to extract these security-related descriptions from unstructured threat intelligence and automatically map them to their corresponding CWE categories.First, a binary classifier detectssentences resembling CVE descriptions, identifying information relevant to security teams. Then, we apply a self-supervised learning model to predict the most appropriate CWE, enabling structured analysis even in the absence of formal vulnerability tracking.As no ground truth exists for this task, we conduct expert-driven validation. Our results show strong performance, with an F1-score of 98.17% for correctly assigning CWE labels, improving by at least 64 percentage points over state-of-the-art reasoning LLMs. This demonstrates the feasibility of automating weakness classification in unstructured cybersecurity text
A systematic review of studies on the association between physiological parameters and self-harm
Get PDFBackground: Self-harm is common in people with intellectual disabilities and is associated with multiple adverse consequences for the client engaging in self-harm, other clients and caregivers. Self-harm is related to emotional dysregulation according to both observational and self-report data. Measures of the autonomic nervous system might provide additional insight in this relationship. Methods: The current systematic review systematically summarized a broad spectrum of studies on the association between self-harm and physiological parameters. The search identified 2400 articles, 46 were included. Results: In most studies, which compared electrodermal activity and heart rate in people with and without self-harm, no clear indications for a relation between physiology and self-harm was found. Studies on heart rate variability showed indications for lower heart rate variability during recovery, which could imply emotion dysregulation, findings which were supported by results from imagery studies (heart rate and skin conductance). No consistent findings were found when self-harm was studied before, during or after actual occurrences of self-harm, although this was examined by very few studies. Conclusions: Although wearable technology has improved, the majority of studies to date are lab-studies. Future research should focus on measuring physiology in daily life before, during and after self-harm, in people with intellectual disabilities, study different types and functions of self-harm separately, and test multimodal prediction models. This knowledge could improve the understanding, prevention and assessment of this debilitating behaviour.</p
Passive Harmonic Transponders With RFID Capabilities: Common Challenges and Techniques
Get PDFThis paper provides a comprehensive analysis of recent advancements and ongoing challenges in passive harmonic RFID systems that take advantage of nonlinear operation to enable tracking, sensing, and monitoring in environments where conventional RFID systems fail. The study begins with a detailed review of the literature that highlights key trends and developments in harmonic RFID technology. Then it focusses on chipless harmonic RFID tags that are cost-effective, require no power supply, and operate through nonlinear backscattering, emphasising the main design challenges and limitations. The work further explores methodologies for enabling identification and data transmission in these systems, covering techniques used in tags designed for detection and tracking applications, as well as those meant to function as sensors. Finally, the paper suggests future research directions, emphasising the need for innovations in hybrid system designs, signal processing, and standardisation to improve the scalability and reliability of harmonic RFID systems
Preface:Twelfth International Workshop on Creativity in Requirements Engineering (CreaRE 2025)
Get PDFStudent Surgical Skills Training with PRIDE: Preclinical Redesign with Inclusion, Diversity and Equity
No full textIntroduction: setting, background and identification of needs leading to the initiativeSurgery is notorious for its lack of inclusivity and diversity. A recent scoping review reports that women do not feel safe, and feel a lack of good mentorship, leading to a loss of diversity [1]. A major barrier is surgical training, and can therefore be tackled by innovative educational redesign.Next, diversity in people of colour and inclusivity is lacking in leadership positions in Dutch academic medical centres, and leads to selective hiring of new staff [2].Visibility of LGBTQ+ role models for students is poor, as many feel unequally treated or even discriminated [3]. People with disabilities form the largest of all minority groups, with a major impact on school access for e.g. persons with a walking disability [4].Everyone experiences and interacts with the environment in their own way, without one “right” way [5]. Unfortunately, learning environments are often not designed to accommodate sensory needs, not allowing for neurodiversity in a student population.Specifically for simulation-based training, manikin simulators modelling the human body (i.e. cardiac resuscitation, vein puncture arms) are predominantly young pale-skinned male models [6]. Medical training scenarios have unconscious bias towards mainstream individuals and groups. Best-practices are available around the world, but are not yet adoptedin higher education in the Netherlands or more specifically, in mandatory Technical Medicine student surgical training courses.Thus, there is a need for increased accessibility for people with physical, visual, and hearing impairment, and for fostering neurodiversity, racial and sexual equality, and improve LGBTQ+ inclusion in education, which should ultimately lead to a more diverse profession.Description of initiative and approach/methods usedA multi-axes SIM-EDI tool will be used [7], including accessibility for people with physical, visual, and hearing impairment, fostering neurodiversity, racial and sexual equality, and LGBTQ+ inclusion. Students and staff from these domains, and educational consultants are included in both assessment and redesign as co-creators. A self-assessmenton equity-focused teaching will follow. Course redesign for academic year 2024-2025 will be evaluated after next year’s course.Discussion of the impact/outcome, and novelty of the initiativeDeveloped teaching materials, activities and practical models to improve accessibility are shared with the educational, medical, and Diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DE&I) community under Open Access, and during the SESAM 2026 conference as workshop.KeywordsSurgery; Diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DE&I); course redesign; student learningReferences/Acknowledgements1. Ferrari L, Mari V, Parini S et al. Discrimination Toward Women in Surgery: A Systematic Scoping Review. Annals of surgery. 2022;276(2):246-55.2. Yakar D, Schuit S, Kahmann M, Kwee T, Mourits M. Zo komen we er niet met diversiteit in de UMC’s. Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2022;166(D6659):1-4.3. Renkema M. Inclusiviteit van LHBTQ+-medewerkers vraagt meer dan een regenboogvlag: Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO). 2021/07/08. Available from:https://chro.nl/artikel/inclusiviteit-van-lhbtq-medewerkers-vraagt-meer-dan-een-regenboogvlag.4. Rochette A, Loiselle F. Successfully performing a university student's role despite disabilities: challenges of an inclusive environment and appropriate task modification. Disabil Rehabil. 2012;34(25):2201-6.5. Mkatini S, Pascual-van der Landen L, Neys M. Diversity | Equity | Inclusion (DE&I) Action Plan 2022 - 2024. Enschede: University of Twente, Team DI; 2022/07/11.6. O'Connor P, Byrne D. Fostering diversity in healthcare simulation. International Journal of Healthcare Simulation. 2022:1–2.7. Purdy E, Brazil V, Symon B. International Clinician Educators (ICE). 2021 2021/09/14/. Available from: https://icenetblog.royalcollege.ca/2021/09/14/equity-diversity-and-inclusion-in-simulation-a-reflexive-tool-for-simulation-delivery-teams
Experimental validation of boson sampling using detector binning
No full textWe experimentally demonstrate a testing strategy for boson samplers that is based on efficiently computable expressions for the output photon counting distributions binned over multiple optical modes. We apply this method to validate boson sampling experiments with three photons on a reconfigurable photonic chip, which implements a four-mode interferometer, analyzing 50 Haar-random unitary transformations while tuning photon indistinguishability via controlled delays. We show that for (nearly) indistinguishable photons, the experiment accurately reproduces the ideal boson sampling binned-mode distributions, which exhibit variations that depend both on the specific interferometer implemented as well as the choice of bin, confirming the usefulness of the method to diagnose imperfections such as partial distinguishability or imperfect chip control. Finally, we analyze the behavior of Haar-averaged binned-mode distributions in relation to indistinguishability and demonstrate analytically that its variance is proportional to the average of the square of the photons’ indistinguishability parameter. These findings highlight the central role of binning in boson sampling validation, offering a scalable and efficient framework for assessing multiphoton interference and experimental performance.</p