Realising Transformation in Response to Future Challenges

This review aims to provide a structured classification of the underlying steering mechanisms in steerable catheters and to assess their future challenges. Existing, patented, and experimental designs of steerable catheters are classified with respect to their steerability. Subsequently, the classification is used as a tool for defining future requirements and challenges for steerable cardiac catheters. The results of the classification provide two categories of steering at a fundamental level: 1) Force generation in the tip and 2) force transmission to the tip. The former group consists of force generating steering mechanisms as a result of 1) electric, 2) thermal, and 3) magnetic actuation. The latter group comprises force transmitting steering mechanisms as the result of 4) hydraulic chamber actuation or 5) mechanic cable actuation. Each category can be further subdivided into multiple subcategories. Future requirements and challenges are found for steering and positioning capabilities, cardiac applications and safety, and miniaturization potential. A structured classification is presented which identifies the different steering mechanisms in steerable catheters. The classification proves to be a useful tool in determining future requirements and challenges, being invaluable for future application-driven design. Using the applied classification as a tool for future design will not only provide insight into previously applied steering technology, it will identify new and unexplored options too. Additionally, insight into the requirements and challenges for catheter steering toward and inside the heart, will allow more dedicated systems, allowing intervention- and patient-specific instrument manipulation.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on health showed that we were not prepared for uncertain health events and its uncertain consequences and impact in society. To be prepared for the uncertainty of the future, foresight provides a systematic, participatory, and vision-building process that explores the future to anticipate trends and support present-day actions. Foresight explores possible futures and their impact on society and population health. Foresight can enable better informed present-day decision-making and thereby better short-term and long-term preparedness in European Union (EU) Member States (MS) and the European region for possible future health crises. With foresight, experts and policy makers can explore long-term decisions that need to be made in the present to be prepared for the future. Using foresight to formulate long-term decisions can allow setting priorities, planning budgets and spending to address health threats and challenges, and learning how to cope with challenges while keeping resilient and sustainable health systems. In this workshop, we will focus on how foresight can be integrated into the policy cycle to support policy makers to be prepared for the future. It will provide an outlook on how a foresight exercise can provide insights into future challenges to provide recommendations and explore policy implications. The workshop will start with an interactive Mentimeter session to get a better view on how the audience is familiar with foresight in the policy cycle. Then, a brief presentation is given as introduction to foresight and its role in policy making. This is followed by a presentation of a Foresight study that provides recommendations for policy makers to address present and future challenges related to mental health. The second foresight study provides an example on how digitalization in primary healthcare can address present and future challenges. The last presentation gives an overview on the role that foresight can play in the policy cycle at different stages of the foresight exercise when discussing the use of personalized medicine in cancer prevention. The workshop will be concluded by a discussion with the four presenters on the lessons learned regarding foresight and policy making. Key messages • Foresight provides a systematic and participatory process to support policy making towards sustainable and resilient health systems. • Foresight can enable better informed present-day decision-making towards better short- and long-term preparedness in the European region and its Member States for possible future health challenges.

The growing network density and unprecedented increase in network traffic, caused by the massively expanding number of connected devices and online services, require intelligent network operations. Machine Learning (ML) has been applied in this regard in different types of networks and networking technologies to meet the requirements of future communicating devices and services. In this article, we provide a detailed account of current research on the application of ML in communication networks and shed light on future research challenges. Research on the application of ML in communication networks is described in: i) the three layers, i.e., physical, access, and network layers; and ii) novel computing and networking concepts such as Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and a brief overview of ML-based network security. Important future research challenges are identified and presented to help stir further research in key areas in this direction.

Pine barrens are open‐canopy ecological communities once prevalent on sandy soils across the northern Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada, though fire suppression and plantation forestry have now reduced them to a few isolated areas. Efforts to restore pine barrens are underway on some public lands, but lack of knowledge on the social and ecological issues and challenges that affect these projects impedes fuller progress. As a precursor to designing a public preference survey for pine barrens restoration, we sought input from those with expert knowledge about pine barrens. Using a three‐round modified Delphi survey, forest land managers and researchers identified the key characteristics of pine barrens and important current and future management challenges. Key characteristics were related to fire, landscape structure, plant and animal species, soils, and social themes. Current and future challenges were related to landscape, invasive species, social, economic, climate change, and science themes. Four social issues (education, fire acceptance, fire risk, aesthetics) were rated among the top current challenges but none of them maintained prominence as future challenges. Potential explanations for this shift are that the experts felt these social concerns would be resolved in time or that other issues, such as development pressures and budgets for carrying out restoration, would become greater future challenges. Our approach can be used by managers and researchers to better understand the ecosystems they seek to restore and to communicate with public stakeholders about restoration efforts.

Wolfgang Lutz, Rudolf Richter, and Chris Wilson have brought us the first overview of the demogra phy of the new expanded European Union, covering, or at least touching upon, all 25 EU member states that were members in 2004. In 16 chapters and 389 pages the contributors describe and analyse fertility, family forms and youth transitions, migration, and health. The volume comprises papers presented at the swansong conference of the European Observa tory on the Social Situation, Demography and Family at the end of its 6-year lifespan. After a stimulating introductory chapter by Wolfgang Lutz and Chris Wilson on overall concepts, trends, and social and economic constraints, the rest of the volume follows a regular analytical structure. The chapters (of very unequal length) are grouped according to the four major topics noted above, each section having three papers, the first dealing with the EU15 countries, the second with the ten new states added in 2004, and the third exploring likely future trends. (The following were the EU15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxem bourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.) The book ends with two concluding chapters of exceptional interest on 'future chal lenges'. Throughout, the tone is generally optimistic, the protecting wings of the EU unquestioned, the emphasis on youth. Much of the material comes from the international surveys that have so enriched demographic knowledge in recent decades: Euro barometer, the European Social Survey, the Euro pean Quality of Life Survey, the (now somewhat dated) Fertility and Family Surveys from the UN Economie Commission for Europe (UN ECE), the International Population Policy Acceptance Survey, the Network for Integrated Population Studies, and the databases of (for example) the WHO Health for All and Eurostat, not to mention the late lamented demographic compendium of the Council of Europe, together with reports of regional and national enquiries such as Families and Transitions in Europe. Unfortunately, the results of the UN ECE's Gender and Generations Surveys were not available in time for this volume. From this rich soup, I shall fish out for examina tion in this essay a small set of individual topics, some cutting across different chapters, and add other ingredients left out of the recipe.

Industrial processes rely on sensory data for decision-making processes, risk assessment, and performance evaluation. Extracting actionable insights from the collected data calls for an infrastructure that can ensure the dissemination of trustworthy data. For the physical data to be trustworthy, it needs to be cross validated through multiple sensor sources with overlapping fields of view. Cross-validated data can then be stored on the blockchain, to maintain its integrity and trustworthiness. Once trustworthy data is recorded on the blockchain, product lifecycle events can be fed into data-driven systems for process monitoring, diagnostics, and optimized control. In this regard, digital twins (DTs) can be leveraged to draw intelligent conclusions from data by identifying the faults and recommending precautionary measures ahead of critical events. Empowering DTs with blockchain in industrial use cases targets key challenges of disparate data repositories, untrustworthy data dissemination, and the need for predictive maintenance. In this survey, while highlighting the key benefits of using blockchain-based DTs, we present a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research results for blockchain-based DTs. Based on the current research trends, we discuss a trustworthy blockchain-based DTs framework. We also highlight the role of artificial intelligence in blockchain-based DTs. Furthermore, we discuss the current and future research and deployment challenges of blockchain-supported DTs that require further investigation.

Changes in practices, action, roles, and professional functions confronted by community psychology (CP) bring new challenges to the discipline. We consulted 15 CP academicians about future challenges in CP practice, research, and education, mainly regarding ethics and values. A Delphi panel was applied to them. Qualitative and quantitative results were obtained from 3 circulations in response to 4 questions concerning the most relevant problems in CP and its training: basic competences, ethical aspects, and challenges. Results show relevant answers pointing out tasks already in practice within PC, as well as new subjects in, and for, intervention. High consensus presents as future ethic challenge, political engagement, and critical standing practices developed around Latin America and other places around the world. Superposing of CP and social psychology, definitions were also found, posing problems of identity, roles, and functions. Academic biases of participants limit the results obtained, presenting known problems already found in published papers.

The terahertz (THz) band is expected to play a more important role in the sixth generation (6G) communication networks. It can provide large bandwidth and high-speed transmission rate to support prospective 6G scenarios from space to ground and from macro-scale to nano-scale. However, the THz channel characteristics vary greatly for different scenarios. This paper presents a multi-dimensional overview of propagation channel characteristics and modeling for potential THz communication scenarios, including ground, space, and nano-scale communications. The atmospheric attenuation and propagation mechanisms are firstly discussed for ground scenarios. Then, the channel measurements, characteristics, and models for specific ground scenarios, including indoor office, data center, kiosk, smart rail, and massive MIMO are investigated. Following this, the THz space communication channels are summarized according to the satellite altitude. Futhermore, THz nano-scale communication channels including on-chip and body centric are analyzed. Finally, future research challenges are outlined.

Devices are increasingly getting connected to the internet with the advances in technologies called the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoTs are the physical device in which are embedded with software, sensors, among other technologies. Linking and switching data resources with other devices, IoT has been recognized to be a trending research arena due to the world’s technological advancement. Every stage of technology avails several capacities, for instance, the IoT avails any device, anyone, any service, any technological path or any network, any place, and any context to be connected. The effective IoT applications permit public and private business organizations to regulate their assets, optimize the performance of the business, and develop new business models. In this study, we scrutinize the IoT progress as an approach to the technological upgrade through analyzing traits, architectures, applications, enabling technologies, and future challenges. To enable an aging society, and optimize different kinds of mobility and transportation, and helps to enhance the effectiveness of energy, along with the definition and characteristics of the IoT devices, the study examined the architecture of the IoT that includes the perception layer, transmission layer, application layer, and network management. It discusses the enabling technologies of the IoT that include application domain, middleware domain, network domain, and object domain. The study further evaluated the role of the IoT and its application in the everyday lives of the people by making smart cities, smart agriculture and waste management, retail and logistics, and smart environment. Besides the benefits, the IoT has demonstrated future technological challenges and is equally explained within the study.

Labelling of micro- and nanoplastics for environmental studies: state-of-the-art and future challenges

Medical education has been changing rapidly in Saudi Arabia. Within a decade, the number of medical colleges increased from 5 medical schools with traditional disciplined-based curricula to 21 medical colleges with varied curricula ranging from the traditional to more innovative, problem-based, community-oriented programmes. The private sector has started investing in higher education generally and medical education in particular. Also other government sectors that provide advanced health services have started established new medical colleges. The expansion of quantity in medical education has been associated with a drive for greater quality assurance. Accreditation of higher education institutes began with the establishment of the National Commission for Academic Assessment and Accreditation in 2005. This review focuses on documenting developments in Saudi medical education up to 2008 and discussing the future potential and challenges facing the sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought great uncertainty about current and future health impacts. Uncertainty about how the virus would directly impact our health. And uncertainty about indirect impacts of COVID-19 on long-term health and wellbeing, including consequences due to delayed prevention, diagnosis, and medical treatment. At this point in time, we know a lot more about the immediate mortality and morbidity aspects. How we fare on the wider impacts on the longer term is more difficult to say. A structured tool for gaining in sight in this, is foresight. We use this tool within the Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (PHIRI). PHIRI supports research across Europe through the identification, access, assessment and reuse of population health and non-health data to underpin public health policy decisions. PHIRI is a practical use case and lays the foundation for ultimately developing a Distributed Infrastructure on Population Health (DIPoH). The joint workshop aims to show ways to better understand the complexity of the wider impacts of the SARS-COV-2 virus on population health across Europe; show how a research infrastructure might help researchers in Europe build capacity and helping each other to achieve higher goals. The workshop will begin with a presentation providing a brief overview of the PHIRI foresight work. This will be followed by two researchers who participated in the PHIRI foresight training program and undertook their own Public Health Foresight study. In the last presentation of the session foresight will be reflected on from a policy perspective. How can researchers and health policy makers better interact to have better foresight-informed policy making. Interaction with the audience will be guaranteed using Mentimeter questions. With this interactive element, insights art obtained what people find the most important trends to act upon, what they consider most important future challenges and how researchers and policymakers can better interact. Key messages • Foresight studies are essential to be better prepared for and to anticipate to future challenges. • With foresight-informed policy making direct and indirect health impacts of COVID-19 are addressed.

In this chapter, we some future security challenges that should be addressed by researchers and designers of mobile payment systems in order to provide a secure environment for ubiquitous mobile commerce. We also highlight some of the challenges faced by users of mobile payment systems which must be understood by designers of such systems to maximize the overall user satisfaction. Finally, we also analyze some alternative cryptographic schemes in the design of mobile payments systems along with opportunities offered by other technologies such as Mobile Cloud computing (MCC) and Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs).

Advances in microelectronics performance and density continue to be fueled by the engine of Moore's law. Although lately this engine appears to be running out of steam, recent developments in advanced technologies have brought about a number of challenges and opportunities for their use in radiation environments. For example, while many advanced CMOS technologies have generally shown improving total dose tolerance, single-event effects continue to be a serious concern for highly scaled technologies. In this paper, we examine the impact of recent developments and the challenges they present to the radiation effects community. Topics covered include the impact of technology scaling on radiation response and technology challenges for both total dose and single-event effects. We include challenges for hardening and mitigation techniques at the nanometer scale. Recent developments leading to hardness assurance challenges are covered. Finally, we discuss future radiation effects challenges as the electronics industry looks beyond Moore's law to alternatives to traditional CMOS technologies.

Recently, geocast routing (GR) has been extensively investigated for reliable and efficient dissemination of information due to increasing number of intelligent transport system (ITS) applications favoring geocasting. In this paper, a qualitative survey of recent protocols of GR and some precise future research issues have been provided. A functional and qualitative description of each considered protocols have been presented. All the considered protocols have been comparatively characterized. This comparative study leads us towards some future research challenges in GR.