Three-dimensional vision enhances task performance independently of the surgical method

Within the next few years, the medical industry will launch increasingly affordable three-dimensional (3D) vision systems for the operating room (OR). This study aimed to evaluate the effect of two-dimensional (2D) and 3D visualization on surgical skills and task performance.

CH4, CO, and H2O spectroscopy for the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission: an assessment with the Total Carbon Column Observing Network measurements

The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) will be part of ESA's Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) satellite platform scheduled for launch in 2015. TROPOMI will monitor methane and carbon monoxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere by measuring spectra of back-scattered sunlight in the short-wave infrared (SWIR). S5P will be the first satellite mission to rely uniquely on the spectral window at 4190–4340 cm−1 (2.3 μm) to retrieve CH4 and CO. In this study, we investigated if the absorption features of the three relevant molecules CH4, CO, and H2O are adequately known. To this end, we retrieved total columns of CH4, CO, and H2O from absorption spectra measured by two ground-based Fourier transform spectrometers that are part of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). The retrieval results from the 4190–4340 cm−1 range at the TROPOMI resolution (0.45 cm−1) were then compared to the CH4 results obtained from the 6000 cm−1 region, and the CO results obtained from the 4190–4340 cm−1 region at the higher TCCON resolution (0.02 cm−1). For TROPOMI-like settings, we were able to reproduce the CH4 columns to an accuracy of 0.3% apart from a constant bias of 1%. The CO retrieval accuracy was, through interference, systematically influenced by the shortcomings of the CH4 and H2O spectroscopy. In contrast to CH4, the CO column error also varied significantly with atmospheric H2O content. Unaddressed, this would introduce seasonal and latitudinal biases to the CO columns retrieved from TROPOMI measurements. We therefore recommend further effort from the spectroscopic community to be directed at the H2O and CH4 spectroscopy in the 4190–4340 cm−1 region.

The Swiss-Austrian Alliance for Mountain Research

Switzerland and Austria are committed to addressing sustainable mountain development in Europe through a joint effort. In June 2013, more than 140 researchers as well as representatives of the 2 countries' funding ministries participated in the “Mountain Days” event in Mittersill, Austria, thereby marking the official launch of the Swiss-Austrian Alliance. The resulting Mittersill Commitment Paper highlights 8 research areas and calls for international cooperation between mountain researchers, institutions, and governments.

Time-variable gravity signal in Greenland revealed by high-low satellite-to-satellite tracking

[1] In the event of a termination of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission before the launch of GRACE Follow-On (due for launch in 2017), high-low satellite-to-satellite tracking (hl-SST) will be the only dedicated observing system with global coverage available to measure the time-variable gravity field (TVG) on a monthly or even shorter time scale. Until recently, hl-SST TVG observations were of poor quality and hardly improved the performance of Satellite Laser Ranging observations. To date, they have been of only very limited usefulness to geophysical or environmental investigations. In this paper, we apply a thorough reprocessing strategy and a dedicated Kalman filter to Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) data to demonstrate that it is possible to derive the very long-wavelength TVG features down to spatial scales of approximately 2000 km at the annual frequency and for multi-year trends. The results are validated against GRACE data and surface height changes from long-term GPS ground stations in Greenland. We find that the quality of the CHAMP solutions is sufficient to derive long-term trends and annual amplitudes of mass change over Greenland. We conclude that hl-SST is a viable source of information for TVG and can serve to some extent to bridge a possible gap between the end-of-life of GRACE and the availability of GRACE Follow-On.

Creating a public tool to assess and promote transparency in global land deals: the experience of the Land Matrix

The Beta version of the Land Matrix (Land Matrix 2012) was launched in April 2012 as a tool to promote public participation in building a constantly evolving database on large-scale land deals, and making the data visible and understandable. The aim of the Land Matrix partnership is to promote transparency and open data in decisionmaking over land and investment, as a step towards greater accountability. Since its launch, the Land Matrix has attracted a high degree of attention, and stirred some controversy. It provides valuable lessons on the challenges and benefits of promoting open data on practices that are often shrouded in secrecy. This paper critically examines the ongoing efforts by the Land Matrix partnership to build a public tool to promote greater transparency in decision-making over land and investment at a global level. It intends to provoke discussion of the extent to which such a tool can ultimately promote greater transparency and be a step towards greater accountability and improved decision-making. It will present the Land Matrix and its value addition, before detailing the challenges it encountered related to the measurement of the largescale land acquisition phenomenon. It will then specify how it intends to address these issues in order to establish a dynamic and participatory tool for open development.

The PLATO 2.0 mission

PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA’s M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary systems form and evolve? Are there other systems with planets like ours, including potentially habitable planets? The PLATO 2.0 instrument consists of 34 small aperture telescopes (32 with 25 s readout cadence and 2 with 2.5 s candence) providing a wide field-of-view (2232 deg 2) and a large photometric magnitude range (4–16 mag). It focusses on bright (4–11 mag) stars in wide fields to detect and characterize planets down to Earth-size by photometric transits, whose masses can then be determined by ground-based radial-velocity follow-up measurements. Asteroseismology will be performed for these bright stars to obtain highly accurate stellar parameters, including masses and ages. The combination of bright targets and asteroseismology results in high accuracy for the bulk planet parameters: 2 %, 4–10 % and 10 % for planet radii, masses and ages, respectively. The planned baseline observing strategy includes two long pointings (2–3 years) to detect and bulk characterize planets reaching into the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars and an additional step-and-stare phase to cover in total about 50 % of the sky. PLATO 2.0 will observe up to 1,000,000 stars and detect and characterize hundreds of small planets, and thousands of planets in the Neptune to gas giant regime out to the HZ. It will therefore provide the first large-scale catalogue of bulk characterized planets with accurate radii, masses, mean densities and ages. This catalogue will include terrestrial planets at intermediate orbital distances, where surface temperatures are moderate. Coverage of this parameter range with statistical numbers of bulk characterized planets is unique to PLATO 2.0. The PLATO 2.0 catalogue allows us to e.g.: - complete our knowledge of planet diversity for low-mass objects, - correlate the planet mean density-orbital distance distribution with predictions from planet formation theories,- constrain the influence of planet migration and scattering on the architecture of multiple systems, and - specify how planet and system parameters change with host star characteristics, such as type, metallicity and age. The catalogue will allow us to study planets and planetary systems at different evolutionary phases. It will further provide a census for small, low-mass planets. This will serve to identify objects which retained their primordial hydrogen atmosphere and in general the typical characteristics of planets in such low-mass, low-density range. Planets detected by PLATO 2.0 will orbit bright stars and many of them will be targets for future atmosphere spectroscopy exploring their atmosphere. Furthermore, the mission has the potential to detect exomoons, planetary rings, binary and Trojan planets. The planetary science possible with PLATO 2.0 is complemented by its impact on stellar and galactic science via asteroseismology as well as light curves of all kinds of variable stars, together with observations of stellar clusters of different ages. This will allow us to improve stellar models and study stellar activity. A large number of well-known ages from red giant stars will probe the structure and evolution of our Galaxy. Asteroseismic ages of bright stars for different phases of stellar evolution allow calibrating stellar age-rotation relationships. Together with the results of ESA’s Gaia mission, the results of PLATO 2.0 will provide a huge legacy to planetary, stellar and galactic science.

Europeanization in parliament and in the press

Europeanization challenges national democratic systems. As part and parcel of the broader internationalization of politics, Europeanization is associated with a shift from policymaking within majoritarian, elected representative bodies towards technocratic decisions among non-majoritarian and non-elected bodies (Kohler-Koch and Rittberger 2008, Lavenex 2013). It is thus said to weaken the influence of citizens and parliaments on the making of policies and to undermine democratic collective identity (Lavenex 2013, Schimmelfennig 2010). The weakening of national parliaments has been referred to as “de-parliamentarisation” (Goetz and Meyer-Sahling 2008) and has nurtured a broader debate regarding the democratic deficit in the EU. While not being a member of the EU, Switzerland has not remained unaffected by these changes. As discussed in the contribution by Fischer and Sciarini, state executive actors take the lead in Switzerland's European policy. They are responsible for the conduct of international negotiations, they own the treaty making power, and it is up to them to decide whether they wish to launch a negotiation with the EU. In addition, the strong take-it or leave-it character of Europeanized acts limits the room for manoeuver of the parliamentary body also in the ratification phase. Among the public, the rejection of the treaty on the European constitution has definitely closed the era of “permissive consensus” (Hooghe and Marks 2009). However, the process of European unification remains far remote from the European public. In Switzerland, the strongly administrative character of international legislation hinders public discussion (Vögeli 2007). In such a context, the media may serve as cue for the public: By delivering information about the extent and nature of Europeanized policymaking, the media enable citizens to form their own opinions and to hold their representatives accountable. In this sense media coverage may not only be considered an indicator of the information delivered to the public, but it may also enhance the democratic legitimacy of Europeanized policymaking (for a similar argument, see Tresch and Jochum 2005). While the previous contributions to this debate have examined the Europeanization of Swiss (primary and secondary) legislation, we take a closer look at two additional domestic arenas that are both supposed to be under pressure due to Europeanization: The parliament and the media. To that end, we rely on data gathered in a research project that two of us carried out in the context of the NCCR Democracy.1 While this project was primarily interested in the mediatization of decision-making processes in Switzerland, it also investigated the conditional role played by internationalization/Europeanization. For our present purposes, we shall exploit the two data-sets that were developed as part of a study of the political agenda-setting power of the media (Sciarini and Tresch 2012, 2013, Tresch et al. 2013): A data-set on issue attention in parliamentary interventions (initiatives, motions, postulates,2 interpellations and questions) and a data-set on issue attention in articles from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). The data covers the years 1995 to 2003 and the coding of issues followed the classification system developed in the “Policy Agendas Project” (Baumgartner and Jones 1993).

CHEOPS: a space telescope for ultra-high precision photometry of exoplanet transits

The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) is a joint ESA-Switzerland space mission (expected to launch in 2017) dedicated to search for exoplanet transits by means of ultra-high precision photometry. CHEOPS will provide accurate radii for planets down to Earth size. Targets will mainly come from radial velocity surveys. The CHEOPS instrument is an optical space telescope of 30 cm clear aperture with a single focal plane CCD detector. The tube assembly is passively cooled and thermally controlled to support high precision, low noise photometry. The telescope feeds a re-imaging optic, which supports the straylight suppression concept to achieve the required Signal to Noise. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

AIV procedure for a CHEOPS demonstration model

The CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) is an ESA Small Mission whose launch is planned for the end of 2017. It is a Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a 320 mm aperture providing a FoV of 0.32 degrees, which will target nearby bright stars already known to host planets, and measure, through ultrahigh precision photometry, the radius of exo-planets, allowing to determine their composition. This paper will present the details of the AIV plan for a demonstration model of the CHEOPS Telescope with equivalent structure but different CTEs. Alignment procedures, needed GSEs and devised verification tests will be described and a path for the AIV of the flight model, which will take place at industries premises, will be sketched. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).