Österreichischer Rundfunk

Austria faces accelerating soil degradation driven by land take, erosion on agricultural land, declining soil organic matter, diffuse contamination and fragmented governance across federal, regional and municipal levels. Although Austria possesses extensive soil expertise, diverse monitoring initiatives and rich datasets, these resources remain dispersed across institutions and incompatible systems. The EU Soil Monitoring Law (SML) and the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 require Austria to make a transition from the fragmented landscape toward a harmonized, interoperable and policy‑relevant soil governance framework. The SHENA - Soil Health Network Austria - initiative provides a comprehensive national response by integrating governance, digital innovation, monitoring and capacity building into a unified soil‑health architecture.The project establishes a national Soil Health Steering Committee representing all nine federal states and two ministries, creating an innovative cross‑sectoral governance structure for soil health. This committee coordinates institutional expertise from agencies, research institutions, agricultural chambers and regional authorities, ensuring strategic alignment and preparing Austria for EU‑level reporting obligations. SHENA simultaneously develops a digital Soil Knowledge and Networking Platform that consolidates at least ten existing databases (eBOD, BORIS, LUCASSA, ABOD.at and others), integrates 500+ resources and enables multi‑actor engagement through interactive tools, expert directories and knowledge exchange formats.A central methodological contribution is the development of a harmonized soil monitoring roadmap that defines ten core indicators aligned with European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), Copernicus and Soil Mission standards. This roadmap builds on different projects (e.g. SoMONA, Bosporus)and Austria’s existing GIS infrastructures, improving data accessibility from ~10% to 50% by 2029 and to 70% by 2034. It provides a structured pathway for integrating heterogeneous datasets, reducing redundancy and enabling consistent national reporting to the EU Soil Observatory.To strengthen societal uptake, SHENA trains 120 Soil Ambassadors - municipal officers, farmers, educators, planners and soil entusiasts - who act as multipliers for soil literacy, sustainable land management and local implementation. Their outreach activities, combined with targeted policy engagement, contribute to reducing areas of poor soil health, improving habitat management across 200 ha and enhancing carbon sequestration capacities.Finally, SHENA embeds Austria within a broader European knowledge ecosystem through seven bilateral workshops with Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, culminating in a jointly endorsed position paper on cross‑border soil governance.Together, these actions demonstrate how Austria can operationalize harmonized soil metrics, digital infrastructures and multi‑actor engagement to build a coherent, future‑oriented soil governance system aligned with EU ambitions.

Nobel laureates are the subject of numerous scientific publications, and interest in this topic is consistently high worldwide. In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L'Huillier. No detailed studies of the citation indicators of Nobel laureates have been conducted to date. The article presents results of a citation indicators comparative analysis 2023 Nobel laureates in physics, based on InCites (Clarivate) data. Publications in Q1 journals and in the top 10% of WoS are considered, and an overview of international and industry cooperation is provided.

To create efficient telecommunication systems we need efficient telecommunication devices. The most energy-consuming element of any radio transmitting equipment is the radio frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA). The highest efficiency of a RF PA can be achieved when its elements operate in switching modes namely in classes D, E, F. Modern efficient telecommunication signals use simultaneous amplitude and phase modulation. Switching PA cannot directly amplify variable amplitude signals. To solve the problem various “synthetic” methods of linear amplification are used. The most promising of these are Kahn method (EER-Envelope Elimination and Restoration). To increase the transmission speed it is necessary to expand the bandwidth of the used frequencies, which is limited by the pulse width modulation (PWM) amplifier of the EER PA envelope path. Multiphase PWM is one way to solve this problem. The use of multiphase PWM in the EER PA envelope path can effectively reduce unwanted PWM conversion products. This will increase the effective bandwidth of amplified frequencies. The article defined efficiency of unwanted components suppression in multiphase PWM, depending on the number of LPF elements for a different number of phases. The requirements for acceptable channel asymmetry in multiphase PWM have been determined. They are quite high and should be taken into account when designing practical devices.

In the framework of the European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS ERIC) In-Kind collaboration, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste has the task to deliver 26 400 kW 352 MHz Radio Frequency Power Station (RFPS) units. They will feed the Spoke Cavities section of the proton Linac. The RFPS manufacturing contract has been awarded to the European Science Solutions consortium (ESS-C) gained the. The production of the amplifiers is well underway and it has reached a steady rate of delivery. Each RFPS is subject to a Factory Acceptance Test (FAT). In this contribution, the main results of the FATs are presented, together with the FAT remote session protocol. This protocol has been specifically developed to cope with the traveling and in persons meeting restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, a problem in the mass budget of large structures like our galaxy or galaxy clusters became obvious. The mass derived from the brightness of the objects was different from the mass derived from the theory of dynamics - not just a little, but exorbitantly. But the observations made at that time were not good enough to be fully believed. Thus, several years passed before a large part of the astrophysical community was fully engaged with the implications. It was the time when the problem of missing mass became established.

Modern reforms introduce new principles which provide the sector with a more suitable orientation. The deliberation in Part I helps to identify six crucial factors for development: Framework, Regulation, Utility Performance, Information/Data, Infrastructure Development and Financing/International Cooperation. Sector principles and crucial factors form a theoretical concept for a sector development in low-income countries and especially the Sub-Saharan region. The more detailed description of the crucial factors leads to some interesting insights. Streamlining the new orientation needs the elaboration of implementation documents for institutions on all levels, which is often the missing link. Even simplified regulation can have substantial positive effects in markets with many failures. Utility performance, measured with a range of useful indicators (especially NRW), strongly depending on corporate culture and governance. For sustainability and quality of information systems, data collection requirements must be linked with reporting to the public. Not only operation but also asset development needs professionals with sufficient autonomy and the key recommendations of the Paris/Accra/Busan agenda are still detrimental. Because of the strong interdependences, a development concept is only credible if it embraces all the identified crucial factors as stringently as possible. However, concerning reforms there can be different entry points and hence, different developments during implementation.

The evaluation of the gathered data in the Configurator Database, the biggest collection of web-based product configurators, shows dynamic patterns of growth and decline in product configurator offerings in the last years. While customizable products of all product groups and industries disappear from the market and others are newly added, there are quite a number of established customizable product offerings. This paper researches how the product configurator user interfaces of these successful products undergo modifications when compared over time.

Cartels were legal to a large extent in Austria until the country’s EU accession in 1995. We examine archival material on registered horizontal cartels to learn about their inner working. Applying content analysis to legally binding cartel contracts, we comprehensively document different collusion methods along the lines described by Stigler (J Political Econ 72:44–61, 1964). Quota cartels employ regular reporting schemes and use compensation mechanisms for departures from set quotas. Specialization cartels divide markets, and rely the least on information exchange and punishment. Price and payment condition cartels primarily aim to prevent secret price cuts, requiring information provision upon request, allow for discretionary decision-taking and (sometimes immediate) punishment. These stylized facts on the contractual arrangements suggest that the possibility to write legally binding agreements was employed to address the usual obstacles to sustain collusion.