ScaleX is a collaborative measurement campaign, collocated with a long-term environmental observatory of the German Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) network in the mountainous terrain of the Bavarian Prealps, Germany. The aims of both TERENO and ScaleX include the measurement and modeling of land surface–atmosphere interactions of energy, water, and greenhouse gases. ScaleX is motivated by the recognition that long-term intensive observational research over years or decades must be based on well-proven, mostly automated measurement systems, concentrated in a small number of locations. In contrast, short-term intensive campaigns offer the opportunity to assess spatial distributions and gradients by concentrated instrument deployments, and by mobile sensors (ground and/or airborne) to obtain transects and three-dimensional patterns of atmospheric, surface, or soil variables and processes. Moreover, intensive campaigns are ideal proving grounds for innovative instruments, methods, and techniques to measure quantities that cannot (yet) be automated or deployed over long time periods. ScaleX is distinctive in its design, which combines the benefits of a long-term environmental-monitoring approach (TERENO) with the versatility and innovative power of a series of intensive campaigns, to bridge across a wide span of spatial and temporal scales. This contribution presents the concept and first data products of ScaleX-2015, which occurred in June–July 2015. The second installment of ScaleX took place in summer 2016 and periodic further ScaleX campaigns are planned throughout the lifetime of TERENO. This paper calls for collaboration in future ScaleX campaigns or to use our data in modelling studies. It is also an invitation to emulate the ScaleX concept at other long-term observatories.

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Objectives During the last decade, evidence-based medicine has given rise to an increasing number of medical practice guidelines and protocols. However, the work done on developing and distributing protocols outweighs the efforts on guaranteeing their quality. Indeed, anomalies like ambiguity and incompleteness are frequent in medical protocols. Recent efforts have tried to address the problem of protocol improvement, but they are not sufficient since they rely on informal processes and notations. Our objective is to improve the quality of medical protocols. Results Our main results are: a consolidated formal language to model medical practice protocols; two protocols, each both modelled and formalised; a list of properties that medical protocols should satisfy; verification proofs for these protocols and properties; and perspectives of the potentials of this approach. Our results have been evaluated by a panel of medical experts, who judged that the problems we detected in the protocols with the help of formal methods were serious and should be avoided. ConclusionsWe have succeeded in demonstrating the feasibility of formal methods for improving medical protocols.

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