On 11 October 2014, the first European guidelines on syndromic surveillance in human and animal health, the ‘Triple-S guidelines for designing and implementing a syndromic surveillance system’, were published [1].The guidelines are one of the main outcomes of the European Union (EU) –funded project ‘Triple-S’, which main aim has been to increase the European capacity for near-real time surveill...

Abstmet-This paper introduces a frequency-weighted frequency-weighted balanced reduction method controller reduction scheme which offcrs good closed-loop (Enns, 1984a, b) and the idea of representing a stability under use of the reduced order controller. By combining the use of a stable fractional representation of the controller as a stable coprime factorization (Liu controller with a frequenc...

In this paper we estimate a sectoral real wage equation for three regional blocs of the enlarged EU that we defined as North (wealthiest EU), South (Greece, Portugal and Spain) and East (acceding Central and Eastern European countries). The estimation results show that real wages react differently in each of the blocs to the impact of market size, location and factor endowments across a range o...

LLAN MELTZER HAS PRESENTED a paper that rescues Milton Friedman’s 1953 defense of flexible exchange rates from its critics and presents an impressive amount of empirical evidence against today’s received opinion favoring fixed exchanges. Nothing is more bracing than the refutation of conventional wisdom nor more satisfying than the vindication of the simple faith that the market is always right...

OBJECTIVE To describe the current situation regarding protection, promotion and support of breast-feeding in Europe, as a first step towards the development of a blueprint for action. DESIGN AND SETTING A questionnaire was completed by 29 key informants and 128 other informants in the EU, including member states, accession and candidate countries. RESULTS EU countries do not fully comply wi...

The European Corn Borer (ECB), Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner), is a major corn insect pest. Estimates of damage in the United States due to ECB range between $1-$2 billion per year from yield loss and control costs (Russnogle). A common rule of thumb suggests that one borer per plant can cause a 5% yield loss if the attack occurs during the corn’s critical early development stages (see sidebar). T...

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is celebrating its fifth anniversary on 20 May 2010. At the beginning of May I started as the new Director of ECDC: it is both a pleasure and a challenge for me to take up my post and to continue the dedicated work of my predecessor, Zsuzsanna Jakab. Long before the Centre was established, I supported the idea of a European Union (EU...