Consensus report: E. coli O104:H4 (HUSEC041) and the potential threat to European water supplies.

Among the 3rd Seminar for PhD students working on Water and Health which was held in Cannes on 27–29 June 2011, experts from a number of universities and research institutes took the opportunity to discuss the emergence of Escherichia coli O104:H4 in Europe. Especially, possible threats for European water suppliers were considered. The consensus is summarized in this report. The main conclusion was that E. coli O104:H4 would not pose a substantial risk to well managed water supplies, especially where regular monitoring of indicator E. coli is negative. However, this may not apply for small and very small water systems which are quite common in Europe. New strategies like the Water Safety Plan approach are needed to protect also small scale drinking water systems and private wells in Europe. Water used in the processing of foods likely to be eaten raw, especially sprouts, should be of drinking water quality

Modelling contributions to the Swiss Energy and Environmental Challenge

Introduction to the special issue that we put together, with 8 contributions from energy modelling teams in Switzerland

Energy-Tax Changes and Competitiveness: The Role of Adaptive Capacity

This paper estimates the effect of energy tax (and price) changes on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and net trade at the industry level, using a panel of industries from European countries covering the period 1990-2003. We investigate the hypothesis that industries with high adaptive capacity (measured by their relative level of labor compensation) are able to mitigate the adverse effects of energy tax rises better than others. We identify the pro-adaptation effect by interacting wage levels (a proxy for human capital) with energy taxes. We find that the negative marginal effect of higher energy taxes on TFP and net trade is significantly reduced for industries with stronger human capital and even turns to an overall positive effect in at least two cases. Up to three low-wage sectors display an overall negative effect. This suggests that human capital is key to adaptation to higher energy costs and climate policy, in some cases making it a win-win

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

From the ground up: Exploring the potential contribution of citizens' assemblies in radical food-system transformation

To contribute to food-system democratization and its transformation towards socio-ecological sustainability, various civil-society actors jointly organized a national citizens' assembly in Switzerland in 2022. For six months, 80 randomly selected Swiss residents learned about and deliberated on the food system. They then co-formulated and democratically approved 126 food-policy recommendations. Employing a political agroecology approach, this study entails two analyses that assess the transformative nature of these recommendations as well as six participants' development of "critical food-systems literacy", i.e., the ability to critically analyze the food system and take action to change it. Based on our findings, we propose that capitalist realism, or the acceptance of capitalism as the only viable political-economic system, must be countered to facilitate citizens' roles in envisioning radical transformation towards post-growth food systems

Neural arbitration between social and individual learning systems

Decision making often requires integrating self-gathered information with information acquired from observing others. Depending on the situation, it may be beneficial to rely more on one than the other source, taking into account that either information may be imprecise or deceiving. The process by which one source is selected over the other based on perceived reliability, here defined as arbitration, has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we formalised arbitration as the relative reliability (precision) of predictions afforded by each learning system using hierarchical Bayesian models. In a probabilistic learning task, participants predicted the outcome of a lottery using recommendations from a more informed advisor and self-sampled outcomes. The number of points participants wagered on their predictions reflected arbitration: The higher the relative precision of one learning system over the other and the lower the intention volatility, the more points participants wagered on a given trial. Functional neuroimaging demonstrated that the arbitration signal was independent of decision confidence and involved modalityspecific brain regions. Arbitrating in favour of self-gathered information activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the midbrain whereas arbitrating in favour of social information engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction. These findings are in line with domain specificity and indicate that relative precision captures arbitration between social and individual learning systems at both the behavioural and neural level

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file