No abstract available

[en] Surface ozone (O₃) is detrimental to plant health. Traditional exposure indexes, such as accumulated hourly O₃ concentrations over a threshold of 40 ppb (AOT40), are easy to be derived and widely used to assess O₃ damage effects on vegetation. However, the regulation of environmental stresses on O₃ stomatal uptake is ignored. In comparison, the dose-based indexes are much more reasonable but require complex parameterization that hinders further applications. Here, we propose a new humidity-based index (O₃RH) representing O₃ damage effects on vegetation, which can be simply derived using ground-level O₃ and relative humidity (RH). Compared with O₃ damages to gross primary productivity (GPP_d) derived from a process-based scheme over May to October in 2015–2018, the O₃RH index shows spatial correlations of 0.59 in China, 0.62 in U.S., and 0.58 (P< 0.01) in Europe, much higher than the correlations of 0.16, −0.22, and 0.24 (P< 0.01) for AOT40. Meanwhile, the O₃RH index shows temporal correlations of 0.73 in China, 0.82 in U.S, and 0.81 (P< 0.01) in Europe with GPP_d, again higher than the correlations of 0.50, 0.67, and 0.79 (P< 0.01) for AOT40. Analyses of O₃RH reveal relatively stable trend of O₃ vegetation damages in eastern U.S. and western Europe, despite the long-term reductions in local O₃ pollution levels. Our study suggests the substitution of traditional exposure-based indexes such as AOT40 with O₃RH for more reasonable assessments of O₃ ecological effects. (letter)

[en] Eurogas is the European Union of the Natural Gas Industry. Since 1994, it has been publishing a booklet presenting the main figures describing natural gas industry in Europe with a view to supporting its positions in the debates taking place with European and international institutions. This paper is presenting the results of the Eurogas outlook updated in 1996, it is based on input from the national members of Eurogas. (au)

[en] Car drivers in Western Europe are paying the highest fuel prices at the filling station. The Netherlands is in the leading group when it comes to the prices of petrol and diesel. This is the outcome of a study conducted by the German research organization GTZ among 174 countries.

[en] Many countries follow or adopt completely the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and use the Systme International (SI). Western European countries for the most part have incorporated the recommendations of ICRP Publication 60 (2) into their national legislation. One exception to this trend can be found by looking southward to that other large North American country, the United States. ICRP Publication 60 (2) was issued over a decade ago, but the US still uses the recommendations of ICRP Publication 26 (3), in a modified form

[en] 'Sandanski-2' is a European East-West Coordination Meeting on Nuclear Science, which took place on the 5-9 May 2001 in the town of Sandanski, Bulgaria. It is the second meeting of this type. Here we present the motivations for holding this meeting, its scientific programme, the list of participants, as well as a short summary of the scientific and executive issues, which were presented by 66 reports. At the meeting 115 scientists from 17 European countries, the USA, Japan and JINR were present. Complete information on the Meeting is available on a CD and can also be found under the address: http://www.sandanski.ru/

[en] Projections of future changes in weather extremes on the regional and local scale depend on a realistic representation of trends in extremes in regional climate models (RCMs). We have tested this assumption for moderate high temperature extremes (the annual maximum of the daily maximum 2 m temperature, T_ann.max). Linear trends in T_ann.max from historical runs of 14 RCMs driven by atmospheric reanalysis data are compared with trends in gridded station data. The ensemble of RCMs significantly underestimates the observed trends over most of the north-western European land surface. Individual models do not fare much better, with even the best performing models underestimating observed trends over large areas. We argue that the inability of RCMs to reproduce observed trends is probably not due to errors in large-scale circulation. There is also no significant correlation between the RCM T_ann.max trends and trends in radiation or Bowen ratio. We conclude that care should be taken when using RCM data for adaptation decisions. (letter)

No abstract available

[en] The major European utilities have jointly developed the European Utility Requirement document for future LWR plants to get requirements acceptable by the utilities, the public and the administrations. Thus the designers can develop standard LWR designs acceptable everywhere in Europe with little changes and the utilities can open their consultations to more vendors on a common specification. Started with five partners in 1992, it now includes eleven utilities. The generic requirements of the EUR document are well recognised as the reference for the LWR plants to be built in Western Europe and they are being reviewed by the safety authorities. The main vendors are developing advanced LWR designs for the European market, with reference to this document. Meanwhile the EUR utilities are producing specific documents that will address these designs. Other joint works are also in progress to clarity and to stabilise the existing texts. (author)

[en] This article draws a brief history of CERN that has just celebrated its jubilee. Today 20 member states contribute to its annual budget that reached 650 million euros in 2004. In 1954 CERN was created by 12 founder states for mainly 3 reasons: 1) to achieve a research facility dedicated to particle physics able to compete with its American counterparts and that no European country could afford alone, 2) to generate with scientific research an example and a promoter for future international collaborations, and 3) to make scientists from different countries that were at war a few years before, to work together. The creation of CERN has not led to a decline of national laboratories as it was feared in the fifties. On the contrary scientific and technical tasks have been dispatched: CERN provides member states with accelerator facilities while national laboratories and universities contribute to the design and fabrication of detectors and to the analysis of experimental data. The history of CERN is marked by 2 main scientific milestones, first the discovery of weak interaction through neutral currents in 1973 and secondly the discovery of W and Z bosons in 1983. (A.C.)