European Coverage Research Articles

Optimizing elderly care: a data-driven AI model for predicting polypharmacy risk using SHARE data

Abstract Background Polypharmacy (PP), which rises with age, is a growing public health challenge, affecting health outcomes and escalating healthcare expenditure. Leveraging the comprehensive European coverage and longitudinality of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) study, we aim to assess PP prevalence patterns and identify the most effective machine learning (ML) model for predicting long-term PP risk, as a foundation for a scalable predictive tool. Methods We used data from participants aged above 50 who were present in wave 6 and at least one of the subsequent three waves of the SHARE study, aiming to predict PP risk at 2, 4, and 6-year intervals. PP was defined as the concurrent use of five or more medications. We analyzed PP prevalence trends and selected the predictor variables from wave 6 using LASSO regression analysis. We evaluated eight ML models, namely, ANN, SVM, DT, RF, GB, XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost, using a rigorous cross-validation strategy to ensure robustness and reliability. Results Our analysis reveals an upward trend in PP prevalence across the surveyed countries, with aggregate figures rising from 34.03% (95% CI 33.1-34.9) in wave 7 to 36.75% (95% CI 35.6-37.9) in wave 8, reaching 39.91 (95% CI 38.9-40.9) in wave 9. Additionally, using the Categorical Boosting ML model to predict PP resulted in overall accuracies of 75.08%, 73.7%, and 71.65% and recall rates of 72.83%, 70.48%, and 67.96% for the 2, 4, and 6-year intervals, respectively. Conclusions This study reveals a rising trend of PP across European countries and demonstrates the potential of using longitudinal data and ML to enhance PP prediction. The tool developed represents a step forward in risk stratification, which would be particularly beneficial in practical settings where family physicians or pharmacists could employ the tool to monitor elderly patients, predict and thus prevent PP, and reduce the negative health and economic impact associated with it. Key messages • The integration of machine learning with longitudinal data presents a significant advance in polypharmacy risk prediction. • The tool we developed highlights the potential translational impact of our findings.

The European Contestation of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: A Media Perspective

ABSTRACT Although the Olympics were meant to play a crucial role in pushing forward the growth of winter sports in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and bolster domestic and international support for its management of COVID-19, they also served as an arena for contesting the selection of Beijing as an Olympic host. The media analysis of the European coverage of the Games suggests that the United States (US) diplomatic boycott and the contestation of Beijing’s approach toward human rights penetrated the European narrative of the 2022 Olympics. However, the decline in the coverage of these issues during sports performances shows that this contestation had a short lifespan.

Institutional references (European/Global Public Sphere)

The variable “institutional references” refers to international institutions which are mentioned in the coverage of national media outlets. International institutions can be related to the EU (e.g., the European Commission, the European Parliament) or other transnational communities (e.g., the NATO for the transatlantic community). Studies using the variable “institutional reference” aim to compare the share of mentions of transnational and national institutions and search for differences between countries and/or an increase of references over time. The variable has been measured in analyses on quality and the popular press and in single country studies as well as in comparative research. It is usually coded on the level of articles. Some studies consider headlines or the articles’ first paragraph only.
 
 Field of application/theoretical foundation:
 The variable “institutional references” is used to analyze the monitoring of transnational governance in national media outlets. It is one indicator for the vertical transnationalization of the public sphere (Koopmans & Erbe, 2004; Trenz, 2004; Wessler et al., 2008).
 
 References/combination with other methods of data collection:
 Research on vertical transnationalization of the public sphere has been combined with qualitative studies on editorial processes and interviews with journalists (Hepp et al., 2012). The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of which editorial processes and which occasions drive EU coverage.
 
 Example studies:
 Wessler et al. (2008); Hepp et al. (2016)
 
 Information on Wessler et al., 2008
 Authors: Hartmut Wessler, Bernhard Peters, Michael Brüggemann, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Stefanie Sifft
 Research question/research interest: Comparison of the transnationalization of public spheres in six countries
 Object of analysis: National quality newspaper, popular press, regional papers
 Timeframe of analysis: 1982–2013
 Variable name/definition: Institutional references
 
 Information on Hepp et al., 2016
 Authors: Andreas Hepp, Monika Elsler, Swantje Lingenberg, Anne Mollen, Johanna Möller, Anke Offerhaus
 Research question/research interest: Comparison of the transnationalization of public spheres in six countries
 Object of analysis: National quality newspaper, popular press, regional papers
 Timeframe of analysis: 1982–2013
 
 Information about variable
 Variable name/definition: Institutional references
 “What international institutions were mentioned in the article? Institutions were coded, but concepts were not; for example the euro is not an institution. If the reference occurred in the header or the first paragraph of the article, it was coded as a primary institutional reference. Up to three primary institutional references could be coded per article. All international institutions that were mentioned in an article but had not already been coded as primary institutional references were coded as secondary institutional refences. Up to five secondary institutional references could be coded per article.” (Wessler et al., 2008, p. 212)
 01 European Union in general (EU)
 02 European Commission
 03 European Council
 04 Council of the European Union
 05 European Parliament
 06 European Court of Justice
 07 European Central Bank
 08 other EU institutions
 09 EU Intergovernmental Conference
 10 EU Convention
 11 NATO
 12 OECD
 13 GATT/WTO
 14 UN
 15 UN Security Council
 16 UN World Conference
 17 Bretton Wood Institutions (World Bank, IMF)
 18 Commonwealth
 19 West European Union (WEU)
 20 CSCE/OSCE (Conference/Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe)
 21 European Court of Human Rights
 22 EFTA
 23 EEC
 25 Warsaw Pact
 997 Other institutions – please specify!
 998 Unclear
 999 Not applicable
 Level of analysis: Article
 Scale level: Nominal 
 Reliability: Kappa 0.79
 
 References
 Wessler, H., Peters, B., Brüggemann, M., Kleinen-von Königslöw, K., Sifft, S. (2008). Transnationalization of Public Spheres. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
 Hepp, A., Elsler, M., Lingenberg, S., Mollen, A., Möller, J., Offerhaus, A. (2016). The Communicative Construction of Europe. Cultures of Political Discourse, Public Sphere and the Euro Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

An Improved Pattern Synthesis Iterative Method in Planar Arrays for Obtaining Efficient Footprints with Arbitrary Boundaries.

In the present paper, an iterative technique devoted to reproducing efficient footprints with arbitrary boundaries for planar arrays is addressed. The methodology here depicted is based on exploiting the nature of the continuous aperture distribution by expressing it as a Fourier series of moderately high orders. In this manner, the resulting illumination boundary is defined by a target three-dimensional flat-topped pattern composed of stretching and shrinking modified circular Taylor patterns and the maximum order of the series to obtain a good reconstruction is determined by means of the iterative process. Examples and comparisons with the previous literature were conducted by analyzing square and rectangular contoured beams as test cases. Additionally, interesting potentials regarding space applications from a geostationary satellite are outlined by means of the EuTELSAT (European Telecommunications Satellite Organization) European coverage case study. In such a way, its numerical approach was analyzed by including subarray architectures and discussing improvements about dynamic range ratio of the excitations without critical power losses within the illumination region.

A Dual-Band Orthogonally Polarized Contour Beam Transmitarray Design

A dual-band (12.5/14.25 GHz) orthogonally polarized contour beam transmitarray has been designed to accomplish the contour beam pattern for a European coverage region in both transmit and receive frequency bands. A quad-layer transmitarray unit cell configuration is optimized theoretically for an efficient dual-band operation. An orthogonally polarized 3-dipole unit cell with 360° phase range is used to control transmission phases at both frequencies independently. A modified intersection approach with a fast Fourier transform algorithm is used to optimize the aperture phase distribution of transmitarray at each frequency independently. An antenna prototype has been fabricated and tested. The measured contour beam patterns are in good agreement with the calculated patterns in both frequency bands. The measured minimum gains in the required coverage region are 25 and 25.3 dBi at 12.5 and 14.25 GHz, respectively.

Expenditure-Based Indicators of Energy Poverty—An Analysis of Income and Expenditure Elasticities

Energy poverty is high up on national and European Union policy agendas. A number of possible indicators to measure the issue have been identified in the literature, but comparable data with European coverage is scarce. The EU Commission thus proposes four independent indicators on the “EU Energy Poverty Observatory” based on self-reported items from the pan-European surveys on income and living conditions (SILC) and household budgets (HBS). It is of increasing public interest to analyse social impacts of energy policies, and quantify energy poverty indicators also from modelling. This paper first shortly outlines how the expenditure-based indicators using HBS micro data may be directly linked to existing macroeconomic models through their defining variables (energy expenditure and income). As endogenous modelling based on micro data is difficult, the link may be country-specific elasticities. The main contribution of the paper is a systematic in-depth sensitivity analysis of the two indicators to changes in income and energy expenditure following varying patterns in the underlying distributions of the micro data. The results may be used by future soft links to models. The results display sometimes counterintuitive effects. We find that whether these indicators increase/decrease after a change of income or energy expenditure largely depends on the specific country-wise income and energy expenditure distribution between households on a micro-level. Due to their definition, the examined indicators are especially sensitive, when income changes alter the indicator threshold values, which in these cases are the median values in underlying distributions. We discuss these findings and relate them to several indicator shortcomings and potential remedies through changes in indicator definition.

Abstract D061: Long-term socioeconomic status of childhood leukemia survivors and their family in a universal healthcare coverage system: A PETALE study

Abstract Introduction: Financial toxicity as a side effect of cancer treatments has been well demonstrated in adults survivors, mainly in countries without universal healthcare coverage. Evidence supporting an association between socioeconomic deprivation and decreased survival for most prevalent adult cancer are mounting, including in various European healthcare coverage settings. As such, the relationship between cancer and socioeconomic status can generally be considered bidirectional. Although financial hardship on families during childhood cancer treatment has been demonstrated, long-term impact has been less studied. Purpose of the study: Study the long-term socioeconomic status evolution of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) survivors and their family using residential aggregated data from Canadian government administrative databases. Methods: The PETALE cohort (n = 246) includes cALL survivors who were diagnosed and treated at Sainte-Justine University Health Center using DFCI treatment protocols. They participated to an extensive late adverse effects evaluation at 15.5 ± 5.2 years post-diagnosis, at an average age of 21.6 ± 6.3 years old. Patients with refractory disease, relapse or transplant were excluded from the study. Data from 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 Canadian government extensive population census linked to territorial codes (postal codes) were used to extrapolate socioeconomic variables. Centiles for average household income, % of single parent families, % of adults without minimal high school education completion, % of households with less than 20 000 CAD annual income and % of households under the minimum threshold of low income were compared at diagnosis and at PETALE study. Summary of findings: From diagnosis to PETALE Study, most families maintain (54.6%) or improve (33.5%) their socioeconomic status. However, for 1 out of 5 families (21.6%) suffer from a decrease in average household income. Age at diagnosis, participant gender and radiotherapy as part of the treatments do not alter outcomes. Excluding participants > 20 years old at PETALE (i.e. analyzing only families were participants can be assumed to live with their parents) did not change findings. Conclusions: Although ecological fallacy cannot be excluded, the ratio of precarious families does not seem to increase in a sustained way once non-complicated (no relapse, no graft) survivorship is achieved. The universal healthcare coverage and various financial supportive policies (example: financial assistance programs for handicapped children) and other public policies for kids and adolescents in Québec (Canada) could explain these findings. Citation Format: Sophie Marcoux, Marie-France Raynault, Caroline Laverdière, Daniel Sinnett. Long-term socioeconomic status of childhood leukemia survivors and their family in a universal healthcare coverage system: A PETALE study [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr D061.

Broadband Reflectarray With High Polarization Purity for 4K and 8K UHDTV DVB-S2

A broadband spaceborne reflectarray with high polarization purity is proposed for Ultra High Definition TV (UHDTV) broadcasting for direct-to-home (DTH) applications. The provided bandwidth would allow to offer DTH and other services, while the enhanced cross-polarization performance enables the improvement of a better signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. The broadband design procedure is based on a multi-resonant unit cell with several degrees of freedom (DoF) and an improved multi-frequency optimization algorithm. It is divided into several stages and sub-stages in order to facilitate convergence towards a broadband, contoured-beam, high-performance design, including the cross-polarization figure-of-merit in the procedure. A one-meter contoured-beam reflectarray working in a 20% frequency band with high polarization purity is presented as an example. The antenna is designed to fulfil the requirements of a European coverage for DTH UHDTV broadcasting in dual-linear polarization. The cross-polarization figure-of-merit greatly improves after the optimization procedure in the whole band, achieving values better than 37 dB in the coverage region, providing an excellent isolation between polarizations. This procedure can also be extended to other satellite applications in dual-circular polarization.

European press portrayals of migration: national or partisan constructs?

ABSTRACTThe press occupies an influential position through its ability to portray current developments and social groups within a particular context. This paper examines which issues receive the greatest attention within European press coverage of migration and migrants, as well as the particular emphases given to these frames. An examination of coverage of immigration in six national-level newspapers from France, Spain, and the United Kingdom from 2010–2016 addresses three questions. First, to assess which are the preeminent portrayals of migration within the media discourse, the paper tabulates the relative prominence of cost, security, or social integration in European press coverage of migration, disaggregated to the national level to provide a comparative perspective. Second, separate case studies of the three countries delve into the particular manner through which key specific frames are presented within each country. The third question investigates whether newspaper partisanship has an impact upon coverage trends. The findings indicate that the framing of migration in terms of issue frequency is still more influenced by national differences, although there are common trends depending on press partisanship.

Developing a competency model for open innovation

PurposeFrom the organisational perspective, the authors know that management, including innovation management, becomes less “organised” by bureaucracy and administrative tools, and much more impacted by organisational capabilities, competences and hidden, “soft” routines, bringing innovation and creativity to the core of organisation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on competency sets for open innovation (OI) and is to provide recommendations for OI competency development in companies, linked to the core OI processes.Design/methodology/approachThe research is exploratory and aims at theory-based practical indication combining deductive identification of competency clusters and inductive model development. Thus, the authors apply quantitative methods to data collection and analysis. The authors conducted an extensive literature review on competence challenges with regard to execution of OI, and empirical data analysis based on a large-scale structured industrial survey in Europe (N=264), leading to the development of competency sets for companies. SPSS tools are applied for empirical tests.FindingsThe authors develop a generic OI competency model applicable across industries, combined with organisational implications for sustaining OI management capabilities. The research clusters competencies based on the empirical analysis, which addresses the various challenges of OI, leading to recommendations for competency management in an OI context.Research limitations/implicationsThe data were collected from one key informant per company. Although the authors made efforts to ensure that this was a senior manager responsible for innovation, the authors cannot exclude some bias in the way that OI activities and related competencies are perceived. Exploratory nature of the research, which calls for a more systematic investigation of the OI activity modes and the OI competencies resulting competency model. In particular, the competencies could be tested on an inter-professional sample of employees with involvement in and/or responsibility for innovation, development, and HR management, as well as on leaders of innovating companies. Third, although significant in size for the analyses undertaken, the sample is not large enough to enable a more fine-tuned analysis of regional differences across Europe in the way that OI is managed through the development and implementation of competencies.Practical implicationsThe research contributes to the OI management field with an outlined OI competency profile that can be implemented flexibly and tailored to individual firm’s needs. It brings indications for both further theory building and practice of innovation organisation, especially with regard to human resource development and organisational capability building for OI.Social implicationsThe social implications of the paper result from the contribution to innovation management competency development in OI regimes, which is an important tool for designing contemporary educational programmes, contributes to OI management sophistication in business which is especially important during the economy slowdown and search for new sources of growth and productivity, and supports firms productive engagement in OI ecosystems and collective technology upgrading towards higher societal benefits and stakeholder involvement.Originality/valueAn empirically grounded OI competency model is proposed with an implication to support human resource development for OI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior attempt to build such a model. The distinguished feature of the research is its extensive European coverage of 35 countries and multinational scope. The empirical validation strategy makes the research extremely relevant for management decisions related to human factors related OI capability development in organisations.

A comparison of variation management strategies for wind power integration in different electricity system contexts

AbstractVariation management strategies improve the capability of the electricity system to meet variations both in the electricity demand and in the generation that relies on variable energy sources. In this work, we introduce a new, functionality‐based, categorization of variation management strategies: shifting (eg, batteries), absorbing (eg, power‐to‐gas), and complementing (dispatchable generation, including reservoir hydropower) strategies. A dispatch model with European coverage (EU‐27 plus Norway and Switzerland) is applied to compare the benefits of shifting and absorbing strategies on wind integration in regions with different amounts of complementing strategies in place. The benefits are measured in terms of the wind value factor, wind owner revenue, and average short‐term generation cost.The results of the modeling show that the reduction in average short‐term generation cost and the increase in revenue earned by the wind owner from shifting strategies, such as the use of batteries, are more substantial at low wind shares than at high wind shares. The opposite situation is found for absorbing strategies, such as power‐to‐gas, which are found to be more efficient at reducing the average generation cost and increasing profit for the wind owner as the wind share increases. In regions that have access to complementing strategies in the form of reservoir hydropower, variation management has a weak ability to reduce the average short‐term generation cost, although it can increase significantly the revenue accrued by the wind power owner.

Dual-Polarization Ku-Band Compact Spaceborne Antenna Based on Dual-Reflectarray Optics

This article demonstrated an accurate analysis technique for dual-reflectarray antennas that take into account the angle of incidence of the impinging electric field on the main reflectarray cells. The reflected field on the sub and the main reflectarray surfaces is computed using Method of Moments in the spectral domain and assuming local periodicity. The sub-reflectarray is divided into groups of elements and the field radiated by each group is used to compute the incident and reflected field on the main reflectarray cells. A 50-cm demonstrator in Ku-band that provides European coverage has been designed, manufactured and tested to validate the analysis technique. The measured radiation patterns match the simulations and they fulfill the coverage requirements, achieving a cross-polar discrimination better than 25 dB in the frequency range: 12.975–14.25 GHz.

Oil Sands in European Media: Representations of the Canadian Oil Sands in European Newspapers, 2008–2013

This article examines how leading European newspapers reported on oil-sands production in Canada between 2008 and 2013. Based on content and critical discourse analysis of news reports published in major daily newspapers in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, it compares the interpretative frames and dominant storylines. The data analysis suggests that overall, European coverage adopted a critical perspective based on the environmental impacts of oil-sands development, with very particular differences in environmental frame building among the national media analyzed. The British coverage focused mainly on narratives based on a combination of factors such as cultural ties between the two countries and social and cultural practices of reporting on annual shareholders’ meetings. In contrast, the later German and French environmental frame building was embedded mostly in the European debate over the Fuel Quality Directive or in discussions of the Keystone XL pipeline project. This article aims to provide a broader picture of how a prominent Canadian public policy issue is reflected in Europe and to contribute to the assessment of Stephen Harper’s goal of fostering the international image of Canada as an energy superpower. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that Canada’s position in the oil market did not allow it to actively lead the international energy discourse and instead fractured its ability to efficiently influence this aspect of its international image. As a result, oil-sands production had important destabilizing effects on Canada’s international image in European media.

3D soil hydraulic database of Europe at 250 m resolution

AbstractSoil hydraulic properties are required in various modelling schemes. We propose a consistent spatial soil hydraulic database at 7 soil depths up to 2 m calculated for Europe based on SoilGrids250m and 1 km datasets and pedotransfer functions trained on the European Hydropedological Data Inventory. Saturated water content, water content at field capacity and wilting point, saturated hydraulic conductivity and Mualem‐van Genuchten parameters for the description of the moisture retention, and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curves have been predicted. The derived 3D soil hydraulic layers (EU‐SoilHydroGrids ver1.0) can be used for environmental modelling purposes at catchment or continental scale in Europe. Currently, only EU‐SoilHydroGrids provides information on the most frequently required soil hydraulic properties with full European coverage up to 2 m depth at 250 m resolution.

Efficient Crosspolar Optimization of Shaped-Beam Dual-Polarized Reflectarrays Using Full- Wave Analysis for the Antenna Element Characterization

A method for the optimization of the crosspolar component of dual-polarized reflectarrays using full-wave analysis at the element level is described and demonstrated. The reflectarray full-wave analysis is based on local periodicity (LP) and integrated within the optimization process in order to accurately characterize the crosspolar far field. The proposed method is based on the generalized Intersection Approach framework using the Levenberg-Marquardt Algorithm as backward projector, and the employed full-wave analysis is based on the Method of Moments assuming Local Periodicity (MoM-LP). Several strategies to accelerate the computations are exploited, such as the parallelization of all the algorithm building blocks. To minimize the impact of MoM-LP in the optimization process, a strategy to reduce the number of MoM-LP calls is described, further accelerating the algorithm. Moreover, the convergence is improved by working with the squared field amplitude, alleviating the trap problem of local optimizers. This method allows to optimize the crosspolar component in the whole visible region or only in the coverage zone to facilitate the convergence, reducing computing time and memory usage. Two test cases are provided to validate the technique, one with an isoflux pattern for global Earth coverage and another with European coverage for direct broadcast satellite application.

Recommendations for Centres of Expertise in Rare Anaemias. The ENERCA White Book

The Community added value of Centres of Expertise (CoE) and European Reference Networks (ERN) is particularly high for rare diseases (RD) due to the rarity of these conditions, which implies both a small number of patients and scarcity of expertise within a single country. Gathering expertise at the European level is therefore, paramount in order to ensure equal access to accurate information, appropriate and timely diagnosis and high quality clinical care and follow up for patients with rare diseases. This applies particularly to rare anaemias due to the high number of different rare diseases that constitute this group. In this context, the European Network for Rare and Congenital Anaemias (ENERCA), co-financed by the European Commission, was created in 2002 with the aim of prevention and management of rare anaemias (RA) and the development and promotion of policies to improve the well-being of European Union citizens. The ENERCA White Book is a position paper, developed as a deliverable of the ENERCA (phase 3) project that intends to contribute to the creation of a ERN in RA (ERN-RA) by preparation of the recommendations and, in particular, the definition of the criteria that CoE, local centres (LC) and their interrelations have to fulfil as healthcare providers. It has been nourished by all the activities that have been performed over the past ten years within the ENERCA framework. The White Book is addressed to authorities in charge of the identifying CoE, as an essential requirement for the official recognition of the ERN, to European and national health authorities, Healthcare centres and health professionals, as well as to all other stakeholders interested in RA. It is also addressed to the patients, as a way to empower their community in this process. One particular characteristic of the White Book is the integration of the three main aspects of a CoE: (a) ethical and legal frameworks to ensure the non-discrimination and non-stigmatisation of rare disease patients across Europe, within their sphere of competencies; (b) clinical and laboratory frameworks for defining technical and quality criteria including scope, general and disease specific elements currently defined as technical and professional standards for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with RA; and (c) the expectations patients have of CoE. Conceived as a working tool directed to a broad range of stakeholders, the White book has been designed and structured to be comprehensible even to non-technical and /or non-professional audiences. The reader will find an up-to-date description and epidemiological information on RA as well as the European Union background policies for defining CoE and ERN-RA. A working group was created with experts of different profiles, known as the European Working Group on Rare Anaemias (EGRA). In order to achieve its objectives, the methodology used by EGRA, was characterised by three main principles: Interdisciplinary, European coverage, and evidence-based principles. Work has been developed into four sequential steps: 1. Analysis of the current situation of RA in Europe by healthcare professionals in order to identify the most relevant issues that have to be addressed by a centre in order for it to be recommended as CoE. 2. Preparation of questionnaires to perform surveys on how the relevant issues identified in step 1 can be translated into practical recommendations. 3. Analysis of the questionnaire results by face to face meetings, feedback and consensus evaluation, and 4. Preparation of a report on ENERCA policy recommendations for CoE. This report is presented in a user-friendly format, easy to understand and available through the ENERCA website (www.enerca.org). Several important conclusions can be drawn from the ENERCA White Book, including the importance of laboratories involved in the diagnosis of RA, patient oriented and multidisciplinary care at the CoE, the need for coordination and cooperation within and outside the centre, the provision of information to patients and health professionals and the involvement of public authorities at the national and European levels. Official recognition of this structure and assurance of its long term sustainability will only be achieved if public authorities work hand by hand with both professionals experts in different disciplines and patients. Finally, the ENERCA White book aims to be a practical tool for health authorities of Member States (MS) that are preparing their national directory of formally designated CoE. For this, it is important that MS authorities recognise RA as an important health component to be included within the National Plans or Actions for Rare Diseases.

The Generalized Direct Optimization Technique for Printed Reflectarrays

A generalized direct optimization technique (GDOT) for the design of printed reflectarrays using arbitrarily shaped elements with irregular orientation and position is presented. The GDOT is based on the spectral domain method of moments (SDMoM) assuming local periodicity (LP) and a minimax optimization algorithm. The accuracy of the LP-SDMoM for the design of reflectarrays with irregularly positioned and oriented array elements has been verified by comparisons with full wave method of moments. Three contoured beam reflectarrays, forming a high-gain beam on a European coverage area, have been designed: a broadband design, a circularly polarized design using the variable rotation technique, and a design with irregularly positioned array elements. The latter has been manufactured and measured at the DTU-ESA Spherical Near-Field Antenna Test Facility. An very good agreement between simulated and measured patterns have been obtained, showing accuracies that are comparable to those obtained for conventional shaped reflectors.

European Media Coverage of Argentina’s Debt Default and Recovery: distorting the lessons for Europe

In 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debts and then devalued its currency by abandoning the peso–dollar peg. The economy rebounded and has grown relatively strongly since then. This paper uses a critical political economy approach to first show that the Argentinian strategy finds support in the literature examining the effects of sovereign debt default, currency devaluation and fiscal consolidation on economic growth. Argentina is thus relevant to Europe’s ongoing crisis. The article then investigates European media coverage of the Argentinian experience through an examination of major newspapers’ stories between 2008 and 2013. It argues that the media have distorted the lessons of the Argentinian recovery by focusing on the negative consequences of default rather than its benefits; by emphasising the role of rising commodity export prices over domestic policy decisions in stimulating the economy; by opposing some aspects of government intervention in the economy even if the latter played a beneficial role; and by exaggerating the negative consequences of inflation. This distorted coverage is explained through reference to the media’s ideological role in the implementation of austerity policies in Europe.

Direct Optimization of Printed Reflectarrays for Contoured Beam Satellite Antenna Applications

An accurate and efficient direct optimization technique for the design of contoured beam reflectarrays is presented. It is based on the spectral domain method of moments assuming local periodicity and minimax optimization. Contrary to the conventional phase-only optimization techniques, the geometrical parameters of the array elements are directly optimized to fulfill the contoured beam requirements, thus maintaining a direct relation between optimization goals and optimization variables, and hence resulting in more optimal designs. Both co- and cross-polar radiation patterns of the reflectarray can be optimized for multiple frequencies, polarizations, and feed illuminations. Several contoured beam reflectarrays, that radiate a high-gain beam on a European coverage, have been designed and compared to similar designs obtained using the phase-only optimization technique. The comparisons show that the designs obtained using the proposed direct optimization technique are superior in performance, both for multi-frequency and dual-polarization designs. A reflectarray breadboard has been manufactured and measured at the DTU-ESA Spherical Near-Field Antenna Test Facility to validate the proposed technique. An excellent agreement of the simulated and measured patterns is obtained.

“SECOND-ORDER” ELECTIONS AND ONLINE JOURNALISM

European Parliament elections are often classified as “second-order” and there are few pan-European media outlets through which European Union (EU) elites can address voters directly. Given these conditions, can online journalism help broaden the scope of European political communication, facilitate interaction across the borders and refocus European Parliamentary election coverage on EU issues? Using an analytical model based on the public sphere, this article assesses online reporting of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections in Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom, on three levels: publicization; participation; and public opinion formation. The results show that despite the differences between the selected countries in terms of online communication infrastructure and the maturity of the online public sphere, cross-national patterns of European Parliamentary election coverage emerge. This allows for reserved optimism regarding the role of online journalism in the building of a European public sphere.