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There is an increased appreciation of the need for horizon scanning: the identification and assessment of issues that could be serious in the future but have currently attracted little attention. However, a process is lacking to identify appropriate responses by policy makers and practitioners. We thus suggest a process and trial its applicability. Twelve environmental conservation organizations assessed each of 15 previously identified horizon scanning issues for their impact upon their organization and the urgency with which they should consider the issue. They also identified triggers that would result in changes in their scoring of the likely urgency and impact of the issues. This process enables organizations to identify priority issues, identify issues they can ignore until there are further developments, benchmark priorities across organizations and identify cross-organizational priorities that warrant further attention, so providing an agenda for collation of evidence, research and policy development. In this trial the review of responses by other organizations resulted in the upgrading of response by a substantial proportion of organizations for eight of the 15 issues examined. We suggest this approach, with the novel components of collaborative assessment and identification of triggers, could be adopted widely, both within conservation organizations and across a wider range of policy issues.

1. The conservation of biodiversity depends upon both policy and regulatory frameworks. Here, we identify priority policy developments that would support conservation in the UK in the light of technological developments, changes in knowledge or environmental change. 2. A team of seven representatives from governmental organizations, 17 from non-governmental organizations and six academics provided an assessment of the priority issues. The representatives consulted widely and identified a long-list of 117 issues. 3. Following voting and discussion during a 2-day meeting, these were reduced to a final list of 25 issues and their potential policy options and research needs were identified. Many of the policies related to recent changes in approaches to conservation, such as increased interest in ecosystem services, adaptation to climate change and landscape ecology. 4. We anticipate that this paper will be useful for policy makers, nature conservation delivery agencies, the research community and conservation policy advocates. 5. Although many of the options have global significance, we suggest that other countries consider an equivalent exercise. We recommend that such an exercise be carried out in the UK at regular intervals, say every 5 years, to explore how biodiversity conservation can best be supported by linked policy development and research in a changing world. 6. Synthesis and applications. Opportunities for policy development were prioritized and for each of the top 25 we identified the current context, policy options and research questions. These largely addressed new issues relating to developing topics such as ecosystem services, landscape planning and nanotechnology. We envisage that this will largely be used by researchers wishing to make a contribution to potential policy debates.

The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field. To identify these questions, a collaborative procedure was employed with 52 participants selected to cover a wide range of experience in both science and policy, including people from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. These participants consulted with colleagues and submitted 239 questions. An initial round of voting was followed by a workshop in which 40 of the most important questions were identified by further discussion and voting. The resulting list includes questions about the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures; the nature and legitimacy of expertise; the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency; choices among different sources of evidence; the implications of new means of characterising and representing uncertainties; and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence. We expect this exercise to identify important theoretical questions and to help improve the mutual understanding and effectiveness of those working at the interface of science and policy.

1. The conservation of biodiversity depends upon both policy and regulatory frameworks. Here, we identify priority policy developments that would support conservation in the UK in the light of technological developments, changes in knowledge or environmental change. 2. A team of seven representatives from governmental organizations, 17 from non-governmental organizations and six academics provided an assessment of the priority issues. The representatives consulted widely and identified a long-list of 117 issues. 3. Following voting and discussion during a 2-day meeting, these were reduced to a final list of 25 issues and their potential policy options and research needs were identified. Many of the policies related to recent changes in approaches to conservation, such as increased interest in ecosystem services, adaptation to climate change and landscape ecology. 4. We anticipate that this paper will be useful for policy makers, nature conservation delivery agencies, the research community and conservation policy advocates. 5. Although many of the options have global significance, we suggest that other countries consider an equivalent exercise. We recommend that such an exercise be carried out in the UK at regular intervals, say every 5 years, to explore how biodiversity conservation can best be supported by linked policy development and research in a changing world. 6. Synthesis and applications. Opportunities for policy development were prioritized and for each of the top 25 we identified the current context, policy options and research questions. These largely addressed new issues relating to developing topics such as ecosystem services, landscape planning and nanotechnology. We envisage that this will largely be used by researchers wishing to make a contribution to potential policy debates.

We present Rubin Data Preview 1 DP1, the first data from the NSF DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory, comprising raw and calibrated single epoch images, coadds, difference images, detection catalogs, and ancillary data products. DP1 is based on 1792 optical near infrared exposures acquired over 48 distinct nights by the Rubin Commissioning Camera LSSTComCam on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Summit Facility on Cerro Pachón Chile in late 2024. DP1 covers \\(\\)15 deg\\(^2\\) distributed across seven roughly equal-sized non-contiguous fields, each independently observed in six broad photometric bands \\(ugrizy\\). The median FWHM of the point spread function across all bands is approximately 1.14 arcseconds, with the sharpest images reaching about 0.58 arcseconds. The 5\\(\\) point source depths for coadded images in the deepest field the Extended Chandra Deep Field South are \\(u\\) = 24.55, \\(g\\) = 26.18, \\(r\\) = 25.96, \\(i\\) = 25.71, \\(z\\) = 25.07, \\(y\\) = 23.1. Other fields are no more than 2.2 magnitudes shallower in any band where they have nonzero coverage. DP1 contains approximately 2.3 million distinct astrophysical objects, of which 1.6 million are extended in at least one band in coadds and 431 solar system objects of which 93 are new discoveries. DP1 is approximately 3.5 TB in size and is available to Rubin data rights holders via the Rubin Science Platform a cloud based environment for the analysis of petascale astronomical data. While small compared to future LSST releases its high quality and diversity of data support a broad range of early science investigations ahead of full operations in 2026.

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