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Mountain regions are complex social–ecological–technological systems whose dynamics and challenges can influence lives and livelihoods way beyond the local scale. To capture, represent, and tackle these challenges, the Global Mountain Safeguard Research (GLOMOS) program has developed a systemic approach to understanding and reducing risks in mountain communities. Drawing on 6 years of transdisciplinary research, this paper presents the approach and highlights its main outcomes and lessons learned. GLOMOS advances holistic and context-sensitive studies for resilient mountain communities through 3 main research lines, directed at integrating climate and disaster risk assessment, recognizing diverse knowledge systems for preparedness, and facilitating sustainable water catchment management. The findings emphasize the importance of interconnected, equitable adaptation measures that address the systemic nature of mountain risks and support sustainable development across these vital landscapes.

Research shows that despite organisational efforts to achieve privacy compliance, privacy breaches continue to rise. The extant studies on organisational privacy compliance concentrate on the extent to which privacy threats can be alleviated through a combination of technical and human controls and the positive (and often intended) influences of these controls. This focus inadvertently neglects unintended consequences such as impeded workflow in medical practices. To address this research conflict, this study uses an interpretive grounded theory research approach to investigate the consequences of privacy safeguard enactment in medical practices, including whether it influences their ability to meet privacy requirements and whether workflows are impeded. Our central contribution is a theoretical framework, the unintended consequences of privacy safeguard enactment (UCPSE) framework, which explicates the process by which privacy safeguards are evaluated and subsequently bypassed and the resulting influence on organisational compliance. The UCPSE highlights the importance of the imbalance challenge, which is the result of unintended consequences outweighing the intended consequences of privacy safeguard enactment. Failure to address the imbalance challenge leads to the adoption of workarounds that may ultimately harm the organisation's privacy compliance. Despite several research calls, the consequences and effectiveness of organisational privacy efforts are largely missing from both information systems and health informatics research. This study is one of the first attempts to both systematically identify the impacts of privacy safeguard enactment and to examine its implications for privacy compliance in the healthcare domain. The findings also have practical implications for healthcare executives on the UCPSE and how they could alleviate the imbalance challenge to thwart workarounds and the subsequent negative effects on privacy compliance.

An essential first step in planning a confirmatory or a replication study is to determine the sample size necessary to draw statistically reliable inferences using power analysis. A key problem, however, is that what is available is the sample-size estimate of the effect size, and its use can lead to severely underpowered studies when the effect size is overestimated. As a potential remedy, we introduce safeguard power analysis, which uses the uncertainty in the estimate of the effect size to achieve a better likelihood of correctly identifying the population effect size. Using a lower-bound estimate of the effect size, in turn, allows researchers to calculate a sample size for a replication study that helps protect it from being underpowered. We show that in most common instances, compared with nominal power, safeguard power is higher whereas standard power is lower. We additionally recommend the use of safeguard power analysis to evaluate the strength of the evidence provided by the original study.

Purpose Drawing upon insights from knowledge-based theory and the learning perspective, this study aims to explore safeguarding strategies in open innovation. Geographic diversity and collaborative breadth can effectively protect proprietary innovations that limit knowledge leakage concerns. Design/methodology/approach Using a cross-industry sample from the Taiwanese Technological Innovation Survey III, which covered 1,519 firms, the authors investigate the conditions under which partnership portfolios affect radical innovation. Findings The findings suggest that the partnership portfolio has an inverted U-shaped influence on radical innovation and that this relationship is moderated by geographic diversity and collaborative breadth. This work identifies a balance in the tension between diverse partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage with regard to open innovation activities. Practical implications This study provides senior managers with an indication of the relationships between partnership portfolios and innovative knowledge protection, identifying the geographic diversity and collaborative breadth that serve as safeguards to prevent leakages of a firm’s innovative knowledge. Originality/value This study makes an original contribution to the empirical exploration of innovation knowledge protection and provides new insights into the field of open innovation. The authors, thus, balance the tension between partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage.

Synthetic auxotrophy in which cell viability depends on the presence of an unnatural amino acid (unAA) provides a powerful strategy to restrict unwanted propagation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in open environments and potentially prevent industrial espionage. Here, we describe a generic approach for robust biocontainment of budding yeast dependent on unAA. By understanding escape mechanisms, we specifically optimize our strategies by introducing designed “immunity” to the generation of amber-suppressor tRNAs and developing the transcriptional- and translational-based biocontainment switch. We further develop a fitness-oriented screening method to easily obtain multiplex safeguard strains that exhibit robust growth and undetectable escape frequency (<~10 −9 ) on solid media for 14 days. Finally, we show that employing our multiplex safeguard system could restrict the proliferation of strains of interest in a real fermentation scenario, highlighting the great potential of our yeast biocontainment strategy to protect the industrial proprietary strains. Synthetic auxotrophy in which cell viability depends on the presence of an unnatural amino acid provides a powerful strategy to restrict unwanted propagation of genetically modified organisms in open environments and potentially prevent industrial espionage. Here the authors establish a general framework for the creation and optimization of synthetic auxotrophs in yeast.

According to transaction cost economics (TCE) reasoning, firms choose equity (as opposed to non-equity) foreign market entry modes to safeguard specific assets. The present paper contextualizes the well-researched relationship between asset specificity and foreign market entry mode choice by introducing knowledge safeguards (international experience, host-country networks, and imitation) and institutional safeguards (property rights protection and cultural proximity) as alternative mechanisms for securing a firm's specific assets. Testing our hypotheses on a sample of 206 small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that knowledge safeguards and institutional safeguards weaken the effect of asset specificity on the choice of equity foreign market entry modes. Contextualizing the relationship between asset specificity and foreign market entry mode choice helps to enhance our understanding of the scope conditions of TCE-based entry mode studies and beyond.

Removal of 99 TcO 4 − from legacy defense nuclear tank waste at Savannah River Site is highly desirable for the purpose of nuclear safety and environmental protection, but currently not achievable given the extreme conditions including high alkalinity, high ionic strength, and strong radiation field. Herein, we present a potential solution to this long-term issue by developing a two-dimensional cationic metal organic framework SCU-103, showing ultrahigh stability in alkaline aqueous media and great resistance to both β and γ radiation. More importantly, it is very effective for 99 TcO 4 − separation from aqueous media as demonstrated by fast exchange kinetics, high sorption capacity, and superior selectivity, leading to the successful removal of 99 TcO 4 − from actual Savannah River Site high level tank waste for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. In addition, the uptake mechanism is comprehensively elucidated by molecular dynamics simulation and density functional theory calculation, showing a unique chemical recognition of anions with low charge density. Separation of 99 TcO 4 − from nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site is hampered by the extreme conditions. Here, the authors propose a solution by developing an alkaline-resistant metal organic framework material featuring unique recognition sites for selective incorporation of 99 TcO 4 − anions.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2025 10(3), 525-553 | Article | (Table of Contents) 1. Introduction. – 2. Conceptual framework: ‘models of constitutional accommodation’ in domestic and international law. – 2.1. Emergency provisions in constitutional documents. – 2.2. Emergency provisions in international Treaties. – 3. From a system of safeguard clauses to a system of emergency clauses: the changing shape of EU emergency powers. – 3.1. The centrifugal effect of safeguard clauses. – 3.1. The centripetal effect of EU emergency powers. – 4. Toward a supranational model of emergency powers. – 5. Current challenges and perspectives of reform. – 6. Conclusions. | (Abstract) What role do emergency powers play under the EU Treaties, and how might they be further developed? At present, these questions are difficult to answer. Due to the hybrid nature of its legal order, situated between a fully-fledged federation and an international organization of sovereign states, the European Union’s approach to emergencies has drawn on both international and domestic models of emergency powers. Still, when measured against these derivative models, emergency powers in the EU are difficult to assess in terms of their supranational distinctiveness. The emergency paradigm has yet to function as a regulative ideal within the Union. Through a systematic interpretation, supported by institutional practice and judicial interpretation, this paper examines a number of emergency legal bases, namely, Article 42(7) TEU, and Articles 78(3), 122(1) and (2), 143(2), and 222 TFEU, and brings them into a cohesive system. While these provisions coexist with other instruments applicable in emergency contexts, they also exhibit specific differences and, taken together, may be read as establishing a core framework for EU emergency powers that reflects the EU’s distinctive characteristics and functions, with potential for further development. The paper therefore explores key elements of this emerging ‘supranational model’, including who can declare an emergency, under what conditions it can be declared, which actors are vested with special powers during an emergency, and whether emergency measures may restrict fundamental rights. It also considers the European Parliament’s recent proposal to insert an emergency clause into the TFEU and how the EU system of emergency powers might be further developed.

This paper aims at demonstrating the energy self-sufficiency of a LoRaWAN-based sensor node for monitoring environmental parameters exploiting energy harvesting directly coming from the artificial light used in indoor horticulture. A portable polycrystalline silicon module is used to charge a Li-Po battery, employed as the power reserve of a wireless sensor node able to accurately monitor, with a 1-h period, both the physical quantities most relevant for the application, i.e., humidity, temperature and pressure, and the chemical quantities, i.e., O2 and CO2 concentrations. To this aim, the node also hosts a power-hungry NDIR sensor. Two programmable light sources were used to emulate the actual lighting conditions of greenhouses, and to prove the effectiveness of the designed autonomous system: a LED-based custom designed solar simulator and a commercial LED light especially thought for plant cultivation purposes in greenhouses. Different lighting conditions used in indoor horticulture to enhance different plant growth phases, obtained as combinations of blue, red, far-red and white spectra, were tested by field tests of the sensor node. The energy self-sufficiency of the system was demonstrated by monitoring the charging/discharging trend of the Li-Po battery. Best results are obtained when white artificial light is mixed with the far-red component, closest to the polycrystalline silicon spectral response peak.

Balancing agendas for climate mitigation and environmental justice continues to be one of the key challenges in climate change governance mechanisms, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). In this paper we apply the three-dimensional environmental justice framework as a lens to examine the REDD+ process in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) and the REDD+ social safeguards. We focus particularly on challenges to justice faced by marginalized communities living in forest frontier areas under an authoritarian regime. Drawing on policy analysis and open-ended interviews across different policy levels, we explore procedural, distributional, and recognitional justice across the REDD+ policy levels in Laos. We find that REDD+ social safeguards have been applied by both donors and state actors in ways that facilitate external control. We underscore how authoritarian regime control over civil society and ethnic minority groups thwarts justice. We also highlight how this political culture and lack of inclusiveness are used by donors and project managers to implement their projects with little political debate. Further obstacles to justice relate to limitations inherent in the REDD+ instrument, including tight schedules for dealing with highly sensitive socio-political issues under social safeguards. These findings echo other research but go further in questioning the adequacy of safeguards to promote justice under a nationally driven REDD+. We highlight the importance of recognition and political context, including aspects such as power relations, self-determination and self-governance of traditional or customary structures, in shaping justice outcomes.