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Abstract.A major task of the newly established "Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management" (SASSCAL; www.sasscal.org) and its partners is to provide science-based environmental information and knowledge which includes the provision of consistent and reliable climate data for Southern Africa. Hence, SASSCAL, in close cooperation with the national weather authorities of Angola, Botswana, Germany and Zambia as well as partner institutions in Namibia and South Africa, supports the extension of the regional meteorological observation network and the improvement of the climate archives at national level. With the ongoing rehabilitation of existing weather stations and the new installation of fully automated weather stations (AWS), altogether 105 AWS currently provide a set of climate variables at 15, 30 and 60 min intervals respectively. These records are made available through the SASSCAL WeatherNet, an online platform providing near-real time data as well as various statistics and graphics, all in open access. This effort is complemented by the harmonization and improvement of climate data management concepts at the national weather authorities, capacity building activities and an extension of the data bases with historical climate data which are still available from different sources. These activities are performed through cooperation between regional and German institutions and will provide important information for climate service related activities.

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Visual attention to threat-related facial expressions possibly contributes to delusion formation and maintenance and may serve as a vulnerability marker. The aim of the present study was to examine visual attention to threat-related facial expressions using dynamic stimuli in people with differing levels of delusion-proneness. We expected that threat-relevant facial expressions would attract more foveal attention compared to neutral faces. Additionally, we hypothesized that more delusion-prone individuals would show foveal avoidance and that this avoidance would occur particularly in the visual processing of threat-related faces. In a quasi-experimental design we categorized our sample by the paranoia checklist (PCL) into a high-PCL (n = 25) and low-PCL (n = 30) group. The participants' task was to view emotional facial expressions in validated film sequences while eye movements were measured. A mixed ANOVA for the number of fixations and equivalent non-parametric tests for fixation time were conducted. Both groups spent significantly more time viewing relevant features in threat-related faces compared to neutral faces. A significant main effect for group indicated fewer fixations in the high-PCL group compared to the low-PCL group for all faces. A significant Group 9 Affect interaction indicated that the number of fixations differed between the high-PCL group and the low-PCL group depending on whether the faces displayed neutral or threat-related expressions. The findings suggest that higher delusion-proneness is already associated with a deviant style of visually attending to facial expressions even in people who do not have a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia. This style may thus be a vulnerability marker for psychosis.

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