Giulia Annovi

The Environmental Commission and the Environment Council said yes to “the right to decide”. Member states may independently establish to ban or approve genetically modified (GM) crops and seeds on their soil. Only the vote of Parliament is left to approve this new rule.

The 6^th edition of the European week for waste reduction closed on November 30, but promotions and actions have still to go on, since the Commission needs to boost recycling in the Member States. During the week 22-30 November, around 12.000 initiatives across 28 countries have been proposed, aiming to foster the implementation of awareness and raising actions about sustainable resource and waste management all around Europe and beyond its borders. Why is important to reduce waste? Not recycled residues are an environment's threat.

“Nutrition is the principle of life”, and to defend it the Conference on Food Fraud has been opened in Rome on 23^rd October. Conceived as a platform to discuss how to strengthen the communication and collaboration among all actors involved in the fight against food frauds and fraud-related crime, the conference has gathered together top experts from food law enforcement authorities, police, customers, judicial authorities, industry stakeholders and researchers.

Seventeen Italian universities have been included in the global universities performance table. The list, created by Times Higher Education, has been drawn up after a careful evaluation of university core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The agriculture wealth does not lie only in food supply, but also in waste production. A European project, started in 2012 and close to its end, has faced the problem of organic waste reuse and, at the same time, the challenge of fuel production from natural and low-environmental impact sources. HyTime obtained an European contribution of 1,609,026 euros under the 7^th Framework Program.

Sebbene proprio quest'anno cada il cinquantesimo anniversario dalla stesura della Dichiarazione di Helsinki, i principi che dovrebbe bilanciare i rischi e i benefici generati dalla ricerca clinica, quella cioè che coinvolge esseri umani, sembrano ancora muovere passi stentati. Questo almeno è quanto denuncia Rafael Dal-ré  insieme ai suoi collaboratori in un recente articolo pubblicato sul British Medical Journal.

A future without effective antibiotics for some infections is possible. Only 70 years ago, penicillin discovery have changed infectious diseases treatment, reducing deaths and illness. However, the high microbial adaptability has appeared few years later drug discovery: already in his Nobel Prize speech in 1945, Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, warned that bacteria could become resistant to these remarkable substances. Between 1940 and 1990, 29 classes of antibiotics with different mechanisms of action have been discovered and designed.

The trend of natural disasters has increased during the 20^th century. In particular, hydrological disasters have acquired big dimension with the beginning of 21^st century. According to the international disaster database EM-DAT, regions in European continents paid a huge cost – about 8 billion of Euro between 2010 and 2013 – for general floods. And the future could be worse than the past.