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As stated in the European Green Deal: "to tackle climate and environmental-related challenges is this generation defining task". Young generations represent a juncture between understanding the potential hazardous impact of climate change on society and local communities. In this frame, STEAM education in school proved its ability to nurture students' curiosity and cognitive resources, provide them with the right tools to understand the world's complexity and face the challenges that the current times are posing, like climate change, among many others. However, STEAM subjects are not always part of educational curricula: according to the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report 2018, more than 20% of pupils in the European Union has insufficient proficiency in reading, mathematics, or science. Such a lack of diversity in the offer may decrease pupils' motivation to pursue STEAM academic paths, often perceived as highly theoretical and complex. The improvement of STEAM education in secondary schools is the core objective of the Erasmus+ funded project "GIS4Schools", which aims at promoting a new innovative approach to foster the teaching of STEAM subjects in secondary schools across four different European countries: Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. The project intends to introduce the education of GIS and satellite technologies for Earth Observation- rarely adopted in secondary schools- and applying them to the thematic area of Climate Change. GIS4Schools combines Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) with Problem Based Learning (PBL) approaches to an interdisciplinary contextualisation of the science topic. Pupils actively contributes to the co-creation of new knowledge by assessing with GIS tools the impacts of specific climate challenges affecting their local community thanks to Copernicus products, Sentinels' satellite-derived information, and other ancillary data. The paper illustrates the genesis of the project, and more specifically, the process leading to the development of training packages for secondary schools' teachers and pupils. Furthermore, the paper explores which methodology and pedagogic approach must be adopted to transfer new knowledge from teachers to pupils. The paper also describes how the teaching of GIS and satellite technologies for Earth observation in secondary school can impact pupils' perception of STEAM subjects and how this can impact their future academic careers. Specific attention is also dedicated to the description of the innovative tools developed and applied for monitoring and evaluation.

In the agricultural sector, climate change (CC) affects multiple weather variables at different stages of crop cycles. CC may influence the mean level or affect the distribution of events (e.g., rainfall, temperature). This work evaluates the economic impact of CC-related changes in multiple climatic components, and the resulting uncertainty. For this purpose, a three-stage discrete stochastic programming model is used to represents farm sector of an irrigated area of Italy and to examine the influence of CC on rainfall and on maximum temperature. These variables affect the availability of water for agriculture and the water requirements of irrigated crops. The states of nature, and their change, are defined more broadly than in previous analyses; this allows examining the changes of more climatic variables and crops cultivation. The effect of CC is obtained by comparing the results of scenarios that represent the climatic conditions in the current situation and in the future. The results show that the agricultural sector would seek to lower costs by modifying patterns of land use, farming practices and increasing the use groundwater. The overall economic impact of these changes is small and due primarily to the reduced availability of water in the future. The temperature increase is, in fact, largely offset by the effects of the increase in CO2 levels, which boosts the yield of main crops of the irrigated zone. Therefore, availability and water management becomes a crucial factor to offset the increase of evapotranspiration and of water stress resulting from the increase of temperature. However, the costs of CC are very high for some types of farming, which suffer a large reduction in income.

In dogs provided with chroinic pancreatic and gastric fistulas (Thomas canula), one of them vagotomized and alcohol-fed for 17 months with 50% (v/v) intragastric ethanol (0.2gm./kg.), an atropine perfusion (1.0 mg./hr.) superimposed on a continuous i.v. injection of secretion (GIH, 1.0 CU./kg./hr.) and CCK (GIH, Crick, Harper 3.0 U./kg./hr) prevents the excitatory effects on pancreatic secretion of an acute i.v. ethanol infusion (1.3 gm./kg.). In alcohol-fed dogs, the i.v. ehtanol-induced excitatory effect on 'pancreon' is exerted through a cholinergic mechanism, elicited at the hypothalamic bulbar centers and/or the intrapancreatic ganglia.

Simecosag Project Results

As energy demands continue to surge worldwide, the need for efficient and environmentally neutral energy production becomes increasingly apparent. In its first edition, this book presented a well-rounded perspective on the development of bio-based feedstocks, biodegradable plastics, hydrogen energy, fuel cells, and other aspects related to renewable resources and sustainable energy production. The new second edition builds upon this foundation to explore new trends and technologies. The authors pay particular attention to hydrogen-based and fuel cell-based technologies and provide real-world case studies of renewable energy projects in the emerging Asian and South American markets.

Deliverable D1.4 is the result of the work carried out in Task 1.4 “Specifications of RESTORE Numerical Models and Virtual Use-Cases for Simulation” of WP1 (RESTORE Requirements Definition, Specifications and Analysis). It describes the relevant specifications for the numerical models developed within RESTORE Project, giving emphasis to the models that are used in the six defined virtual use-cases for RESTORE. For this, D1.4 gathers specifications, such as feasible computational effort, compatibility between models, adaptability to the web-platform, modularity and flexibility. The information provided here builds up on the general guideline of Deliverable D1.1 of the RESTORE overall concept, and focuses on its modelling, emphasizing the simulation concept of the project and the adaption of the simulation tools for the design of each Use-Case in an ad-hoc solution, considering the boundary conditions imposed by each specific application. In this context, the document provides the general basis to be considered as a guide during the project process modelling and use-cases implementation.

The MAGIC-CROPS database is an easy-to-use tool including 37 promising non-food species suited to marginal land as defined in the JRC’s report (EUR 23412 EN - 2008 and later modifications). Additionally, to biophysical constraints referred in the above-mentioned report, the MAGIC-CROPS database includes also information about the suitability of some species to soil contaminated by heavy metals. The present deliverable is the final version of the MAGIC-CROPS database and all the 37 crops are included. Twenty out of the 37 species included in the database are under-study in WP4 of the MAGIC project, so in the event that important new insights will come out after the publication of the present deliverable, the MAGIC-CROPS database will be updated accordingly by the end of the project (31.12.2021).

In 2008 the CATRENE Scientific Committee established a Working Group on Energy Autonomous Systems (EAS) with the mission of writing a White Paper on this topic. The approach was to gather European experts from academia and industry representing various areas related to EAS in order to: i) define the field, ii) review the current state-of-the-art, iii) discuss the future impact of EAS technologies on the electronics industry and on society at large, iv) identify Europe’s strengths and weaknesses, and v) formulate recommendations with respect to public initiatives, efficient research and education. Special care was devoted to the boundaries within this multidisciplinary scientific field. One of the main outputs of this study has been the preparation of a Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) document for each of the areas of the report: energy harvesting and sources, ultra low-power systems and power management. These TRLs make a forecast of existing technologies by assessing the present state of development as well as a projected timeline for future developments in the next 5 and 10 years, respectively.