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Vibrio spp. infections still are a Public Health concern. Vibrio spp. can be found in marine, estuarine, and freshwater environments, and can be able to cause diseases in fish, shellfish, mammals, as well as in humans. Since '80 to date, the number of species within the genus increased from 21 to more than 100. The most important is Vibrio cholerae, the etiological agent of the cholera, responsible of seven pandemics; serotypes O1 and O139 can produce cholera toxin, while serotypes non-O1/non-O139 are generally associated with sporadic cholera cases and extraintestinal infections. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is an important cause of gastroenteritis associated with contaminated seafood consumption, whereas Vibrio vulnificus and V. alginolyticus can be related to wound infections or seafoodborne primary septicemia in immunocompromised patients. Disease prevention is mainly based on the application of proper individual or collective preventive measures.

A substantial amount of carbon is emitted by terrestrial vegetation as biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC), which contributes to the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere, to particle production and to the carbon cycle. With regard to the carbon budget of the terrestrial biosphere, a release of these carbon compounds is regarded as a loss of photosynthetically fixed carbon. The significance of this loss for the regional and global carbon cycles is controversial. We estimate the amount of VOC carbon emittedin relation to the CO2 taken up, based on our own enclosure and micrometeorological flux measurements of VOC emissions and CO2 exchange within the Mediterranean area and the tropical rainforest in Amazonia and on literature data. While VOC flux estimates are small in relation to net primary productivity and gross primary productivity, the amount of carbon lost as VOC emissions can be highly significant relative to net ecosystem productivity. In fact, VOC losses are of the same order of magnitude as net biome productivity. Although we must assume that large amounts of these reemissions are recycled within the biosphere, a substantial part can be assumed to be lost into longer-lived oxidation products that are lost from the terrestrial biosphere by transport. However, our current knowledge does not allow a reliable estimation of this carbon

The fraction of assimilated carbon released by plant species as VOC has been evaluated through experimental data collected at branch and ecosystem levels in variuos tropspheric sites around the world. Data seem to suggest that real values are smaller tha present estimates.

The COVID-19 pandemic puts health and care systems under pressure globally. This current paper highlights challenges arising in the care for older and vulnerable populations in this context and reflects upon possible perspectives for different systems making use of nested integrated care approaches adapted during the work of the EU-funded project VIGOUR ("Evidence based Guidance to Scale-up Integrated Care in Europe", funded by the European Union's Health Programme 2014-2020 under Grant Agreement Number 826640).