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Here I discuss Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as a region undergoing rapid change, resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union and admission of some of the states into the European Union. These events brought changes in governance and ecosystem management, triggering impacts on land use and biodiversity. What are some of the policy options toward sustainability in the face of these political, governance, and socioeconomic changes? Some policy considerations for ecosystem management and sustainability include taking a social-ecological systems approach to integrate biophysical subsystems and social subsystems; paying attention to institutions relevant to shared resources (commons) management; and using resilience theory to study change and guidance for governance. Documented experience in CEE seems to indicate shortcomings for both the centralized state management option and the purely market-driven option for ecosystem management. If so, a "smart mix" of state regulations, market incentives, and self-governance using local commons institutions may be the most promising policy option to foster ecosystem stewardship at multiple levels from local to international. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports insufficient funding for ancient DNA research has caused a brain drain from U.S. to European research facilities. It states of the top 18 high-impact ancient DNA research published from 2011-2015, only one U.S. and one Australian lab had a paper in the top 18, while the rest were from Europe. It mentions only the National Science Foundation provides ancient DNA research funding in the U.S. with awards ranging from 100,000 to 350,000 dollars a year for three years.

BIOMEDICINE Gene therapy for a blood disease The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week approved a genetic treatment for the blood disorder beta-thalassemia, marking the third U.S. gene therapy for a rare disease. ARCHAEOLOGY Drought exposes "Spanish Stonehenge" for study Scientists are rushing to examine a 7000-year-old stone circle in central Spain that had been drowned by a reservoir for decades and was uncovered after the drought plaguing Europe lowered water levels. [Extracted from the article]

The article informs that the Nature family of journals said it has struck a deal that will allow scientists at research institutions across Germany to publish papers in Nature and its 54 sister journals that are immediately free to read. It mentions the deal, known as a transformative agreement, comes as research funders in Europe are pushing to demolish journal paywalls and redirect money spent on subscriptions to supporting open access.

The article reports on a proposal by the European Commission which would provide researchers in the European Union greater freedom to study text and data from copyright-protected papers and mentions the League of European Research Universities questioned a provision that could make data mining more difficult.

The article focuses on impact of socio-economic factors on environmental change and affecting of biodiversity and climate change by humans. Topics discussed include rapid transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in terms of political changes and economic growth, political transformation is experienced by CEE countries towards free market and democracy and changes in ecosystem management will also be observed if the European Union (EU) is continuously accessed.

Reports research which studied the output of scientific papers in Europe. London leading in total output; Cambridge leading in papers per capita; Value of study for local governments; Survey done by Matthiessen and Schwarz, Technical Knowledge Center of Denmark; Statistical details; Trends in specific fields.

Reports on the European Commission's (EU) call for greater influence in European science policy. EU's paper on improving coordination among national research programs of EU members; Commission's aim to create programs run by EU but funded voluntarily by EU members; Factions endorsing the paper.

The article reports that while moves in the U.S. to make scientific research results available at the click of a mouse have generated intense debate, European research organizations have quietly been forging ahead. Slowly but surely, they are starting to build and connect institutional and even nationwide public archives that will, according to proponents, be the mega libraries of the future, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to access papers that result from publicly funded research. In France, the government's four major research institutes, 6 weeks ago jointly declared their intention to move toward open archives.

This article criticizes the editorial entitled "A challenge for the EU," by Pierre Papon published in the August 2003 issue of the journal "Science." Papon began his editorial by emphasizing the disparities in spending on research and development between the United States, Japan and the European Union (EU): 2.8%, 3.0% and 1.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) respectively. Against this background, Papon outlined the European Commissioners' plan to increase EU research and development spending to 3.0% of GDP and then devotes much of the rest of his editorial to EU proposals about spending on basic research in general and for a European Research Council (ERC) in particular. The differences in the research and development figures arise almost entirely from differences in spending by the private sector. Studies of research output whether measured by numbers of papers, citations, or major international prizes in relation to science base spending 3 to 5 years earlier, reveal very big differences among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with the top performers being Switzerland, Sweden and Israel. Indicators reveal that Europe is investing globally less in research than the United States and the recent trend is not favorable to Europe, because the U.S. industry has continuously increased its research and development funding. Furthermore, funds provided by foundations to academic science are certainly higher in the United States than in Europe.

The article discusses a type of ranavirus (RV), called the common midwife toad virus, that is killing a wide range of amphibian species in the Picos de Europa National Park in northern Spain, according to a paper published in a September 2014 issue of "Current Biology."

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has proposed reducing by a factor of 100,000 the tolerable daily intake of bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor that interferes with hormone systems and has been linked to disease. In a move that could signal a new approach to regulating potentially hazardous compounds, European health experts are recommending a drastic cut in the allowable human consumption of a common chemical in food. [Extracted from the article]

The article features the views given by readers and response of the author regarding "International Conservation Policy Delivers Benefits for Birds in Europe." Roland Rodriguez-Muñoz and colleagues commented that the author's conclusions are overstatements based on unsuitable data and inappropriate analysis. Donald replied that Rodriguez-Muñoz and colleagues stressed that the results of their experiments are robust to the different assumptions of uncertainty surrounding trend estimates and the criticisms of the methods are attributed from misunderstanding of the original paper.

The article reports on the ongoing quest for free access to the results of publicly funded research of which European Union (EU) research organizations had signed an online petition for the European Commission to take action on the so-called open access. There were 14,000 researchers and 500 research institutes had signed the petition. While traditional scientific publishers claimed that the future of scientific communication as well as their €3 billion worth European industry is at risk. At the moment, the publishers' claim was honored and that the commission failed to enact a mandatory open-access policy for EU-funded scientists. Advocates of the open-access contend that scientific papers should be available to everyone for free.

This article reports that a Swedish anthropologist has found the first evidence of dental modification by early Europeans. The anthropologist has found that young men in Viking-age Scandinavia filed deep furrows into their upper front teeth. Caroline Arcini of the National Heritage Board in Lund, discovered the marks on the 1000-year-old skeletons of 24 young males, which were among several hundred skeletons unearthed from four different cemeteries in southern Sweden and held in storage in several museum collections. Arcini thinks earlier researchers assumed the dental marks to be from wear or damage. But the furrows were clearly filed intentionally and with a great deal of skill. She presented her reports in a paper in press at the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology." She speculates that the men filled the grooves with a colored substance such as wax or fat mixed with pigment to make the marks more visible. George Milner, an archaeologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, who has studied similar dental modifications in prehistoric North Americans, says such marks usually indicate a social group affiliation.

This article reports that Europe's biggest HIV research organization, the 49 million dollars French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis has a new director. Jean-François Delfraissy, a clinician at the forefront of HIV research and treatment since the early 1980s and most recently director of internal medicine at Bicêtre Hospital in Paris, has authored more than 200 papers and played a key role in many clinical trials, including the first one to show the effectiveness of AZT against mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He has also promoted ANRS's recent expansion into hepatitis B and C research. Joep Lange, past president of the International AIDS Society, who predicts that Delfraissy's accessible style will help foster international collaborations. Delfraissy succeeds Michel Kazatchkine, who in February became the French government's ambassador in the fight against AIDS.

West Nile virus has walloped the United States each year since it arrived in 1999. Mysteriously, however, there have been few human outbreaks in Europe, even though the virus is endemic there, and the birds that harbor it and the mosquitoes that transmit it are similar to those in the United States. Now, genetic analyses of mosquitoes from five continents suggest a controversial explanation for this mystery: U.S. mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus may be hybrids of two strains. The paper's authors, led by Dina Fonseca of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who was working with Richard Wilkerson of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, focused on a complex of mosquitoes called Culex pipiens.

PHOTO (COLOR): This collection of bronze artifacts was contained in a pouch or box and lost on a battlefield 3300 years ago, archaeologists say. The watery conditions below the surface also preserved bits of wood, including the awl's birch handle, which helped archaeologists date the finds. [Extracted from the article]

This paper aims to evaluate the economic and fiscal effects of inflows of asylum seekers into Western Europe from 1985 to 2015. It relies on an empirical methodology that is widely used to estimate the macroeconomic effects of structural shocks and policies. It shows that inflows of asylum seekers do not deteriorate host countries' economic performance or fiscal balance because the increase in public spending induced by asylum seekers is more than compensated for by an increase in tax revenues net of transfers. As asylum seekers become permanent residents, their macroeconomic impacts become positive.

Wood-pastures are complex social-ecological systems (SES), which are the product of long-term interaction between society and its surrounding landscape. Traditionally characterized by multifunctional low-intensity management that enhanced a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), current farm management has shifted toward more intensive farm models. This study assesses the supply of ES in four study areas dominated by managed wood-pastures in Spain, Sweden, and Romania. On the basis of 144 farm surveys and the use of multivariate techniques, we characterize farm management and structure in the study areas and identify the trade-offs in ES supply associated with this management. We link these trade-offs to multiple factors that characterize the landholding: economic, social, environmental, technological, and governance. Finally, we analyze how landholders' values and perspectives have an effect on management decisions. Results show a differentiated pattern of ES supply in the four study areas. We identified four types of trade-offs in ES supply that appear depending on what is being promoted by the farm management and that are associated with different dimensions of wood-pasture management: productivity-related trade-offs, crop production-related trade-offs, multifunctionality-related trade-offs, and farm accessibility-related trade-offs. These trade-offs are influenced by complex interactions between the properties of the SES, which have a direct influence on landholders' perspectives and motivations. The findings of this paper advance the understanding of the dynamics between agroecosystems and society and can inform system-based agricultural and conservation policies.