Virtual Research Environments are innovative, web-based, community-oriented, comprehensive, flexible, and secure working environments conceived to serve the needs of modern science. We overview the existing initiatives developing these environments by highlighting the major distinguishing features. We envisage a future where regardless of geographical location, scientists will be able to use their Web browsers to seamlessly access data, software, and processing resources that are managed by diverse systems in separate administration domains via Virtual Research Environments. We identify and discuss the major challenges that should be resolved to fully achieve the proposed vision, i.e., large-scale integration and interoperability, sustainability, and adoption.

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Total or inhalable (PM10) particulate matter is monitored as a quality air criteria. Airborne particles deposit onto the differently sensitive biological tissues of the respiratory tract depending on their size. So it is very important to know the mutagenic activity (index of potential carcinogenicity) of the substances carried onto the diverse sized fractions of urban particulate matter, especially those under 1 μm in diameter. The mutagenicity of total and sized fractions of urban particulate matter of Bologna (Italy), representative of a medium size town surrounded by small and medium industries, was investigated using the plate incorporation test on Salmonella typhimurium. There is no correlation between total and/or coarse particle matter concentration in air and mutagenic activity, the correlation increases as the particle size decreases; moreover, the finer the particulate matter, the greater the mutagenicity is. That is of great concern for health risk estimation. Total or inhalable (PM10) particulate matter is not representative of air quality, at least with regard to the mutagenicity.