ESA deployed the first Doppler wind lidar in space within its Earth Explorer Mission Aeolus in August 2018. Since then global wind profiles have been acquired for the improvement of weather forecasts on short and medium term. Current calibration and validation activities indicate the demanded positive impact from different forecast centers. In addition, Aeolus provides profiles of atmospheric backscatter and extinction coefficients that are supposed to become input for air quality models. The talk will provide an overview of the encountered technical challenges in flight and some preliminary results from impact studies.

ESA deployed the first Doppler Wind lidar in space within its Earth Explorer Mission Aeolus. The objective of Aeolus is to provide tropospheric and lower stratospheric wind profiles globally for the improvement of weather forecasts on short and medium term. Spin-off products are profiles of atmospheric backscatter and extinction coefficients and lidar ratio that can input for air quality models. After the successful launch in late August 2018 and following commissioning phase, the Calibration and Validation phase started in Decemeber 2018. The talk will recap the highlights of these phases and present the status of the mission.

Software development is inherently an ordering process. When implemented in a workplace it orders the ways that people go about their work, the work they do, and the ways they interact and communicate with each other. This new mode of ordering may conflict with existing orders, existing distributions of power and knowledge, and arrangements of groups, and between groups. Ordering is almost always the subject of dispute, so software development can easily become enmeshed in the politicking between competing groups with deleterious effects. Removing all these conflicts may not be possible, as they can be an essential part of the ways relevant groups interact. Better communication, for example, may actually increase conflict, and not produce harmony. Rather than thinking of order and disorder as mutually exclusive polarities, it is more effective and realistic to think of them as constituting an `order/disorder complex' and to expect disorder to appear alongside the ordering. This paper explores the problems of ordering and disordering through a study of changes in the Australian Customs' “Integrated Cargo System”. We suggest that acceptance of some untidied mess, or openness to both dispute and unclarity, may be useful in implementing functional software.

The credibility of web sites is becoming an increasingly important area to understand. To expand knowledge in this domain, we conducted an online study that investigated how different elements of Web sites affect people's perception of credibility. Over 1400 people participated in this study, both from the U.S. and Europe, evaluating 51 different Web site elements. The data showed which elements boost and which elements hurt perceptions of Web credibility. Through analysis we found these elements fell into one of seven factors. In order of impact, the five types of elements that increased credibility perceptions were “real-world feel”, “ease of use”, “expertise”, “trustworthiness”, and “tailoring”. The two types of elements that hurt credibility were “commercial implications&rdquo ;and “amateurism”. This large-scale study lays the groundwork for further research into the elements that affect Web credibility. The results also suggest implications for designing credible Web sites.