A future for digital public goods for monitoring SDG indicators.

Digital public goods (DPGs), if implemented with effective policies, can facilitate the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there are ongoing deliberations on how to define DPGs and assure that society can extract the maximum benefit from the growing number of digital resources. The International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS) sees DPGs as an important mechanism to facilitate information-driven policy and decision-making processes for the SDGs. This article presents the results of a CBAS survey of 51 respondents from around the world spanning multiple scientific fields, who shared their expert opinions on DPGs and their thoughts about challenges related to their practical implementation in supporting the SDGs. Based on the survey results, the paper presents core principles in a proposed strategy, including establishment of international standards, adherence to open science and open data principles, and scalability in monitoring SDG indicators. A community-driven strategy to develop DPGs is proposed to accelerate DPG production in service of the SDGs while adhering to the core principles identified in the survey.

A small heterobifunctional ligand provides stable and water dispersible core-shell CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs).

We describe a simple method to prepare water dispersible core-shell CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) 1 by capping QDs with a new thiol-containing heterobifunctional dicarboxylic ligand 4 (DHLA-EDADA). This ligand, obtained on a gram scale through a few synthetic steps, provides a compact layer on the QDs, whose hydrodynamic size in H2O is 15 nm ± 3 nm. The colloidal stability is dramatically enhanced with respect to the well-known (±) α-lipoic acid (DHLA). The ligand affinity towards QDs and the water dispersibility of nanocrystals 1 are addressed by the dithiol groups of DHLA, which chelate the zinc of the shell, and by the dicarboxylic groups of the ethylenediamine-N,N-diacetic acid (EDADA) residue, respectively. The effects of pH, buffer solutions, and biological medium on the stability of QDs 1 were assessed by monitoring the photoluminescence (PL) and hydrodynamic size over time. Highly fluorescent QD dispersions, stable over extended periods of time and over broad pH ranges and buffer types, were obtained. Furthermore, we show that the DHLA-EDADA ligand 4 also endows QDs with functional groups suitable for further conjugation and for metal ion detection. As a case study to illustrate the potential of our approach, we report the preparation and characterization of a highly luminescent orange light emitting polymer-QD 1 composite film.

The GEOSS solution for enabling data interoperability and integrative research.

Global sustainability research requires an integrative research effort underpinned by digital infrastructures (systems) able to harness data and heterogeneous information across disciplines. Digital data and information sharing across systems and applications is achieved by implementing interoperability: a property of a product or system to work with other products or systems, present or future. There are at least three main interoperability challenges a digital infrastructure must address: technological, semantic, and organizational. In recent years, important international programs and initiatives are focusing on such an ambitious objective. This manuscript presents and combines the studies and the experiences carried out by three relevant projects, focusing on the heavy metal domain: Global Mercury Observation System, Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), and INSPIRE. This research work recognized a valuable interoperability service bus (i.e., a set of standards models, interfaces, and good practices) proposed to characterize the integrative research cyber-infrastructure of the heavy metal research community. In the paper, the GEOSS common infrastructure is discussed implementing a multidisciplinary and participatory research infrastructure, introducing a possible roadmap for the heavy metal pollution research community to join GEOSS as a new Group on Earth Observation community of practice and develop a research infrastructure for carrying out integrative research in its specific domain.

Transport infrastructure surveillance and monitoring by electromagnetic sensing: the ISTIMES project.

The ISTIMES project, funded by the European Commission in the frame of a joint Call "ICT and Security" of the Seventh Framework Programme, is presented and preliminary research results are discussed. The main objective of the ISTIMES project is to design, assess and promote an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based system, exploiting distributed and local sensors, for non-destructive electromagnetic monitoring of critical transport infrastructures. The integration of electromagnetic technologies with new ICT information and telecommunications systems enables remotely controlled monitoring and surveillance and real time data imaging of the critical transport infrastructures. The project exploits different non-invasive imaging technologies based on electromagnetic sensing (optic fiber sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite platform based, hyperspectral spectroscopy, Infrared thermography, Ground Penetrating Radar-, low-frequency geophysical techniques, Ground based systems for displacement monitoring). In this paper, we show the preliminary results arising from the GPR and infrared thermographic measurements carried out on the Musmeci bridge in Potenza, located in a highly seismic area of the Apennine chain (Southern Italy) and representing one of the test beds of the project.