Brussels blog round up for 6 October – 12 October: Merkel inGreece, the Catalonia debate rages on, and EU wins the NobelPeace Prize.

Reaction to the EU’s 2012 Nobel Peace Prize award has been mixed. Open Europe draws a comparison with the “once celebrated actor who just got a lif etime achievement award”, arguing that while European integration did play a signif icant role in ensuring peace af ter World War II, the EU’s recent record is less impressive. European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström is, perhaps unsurprisingly, more positive. She calls the award “most welcome, unexpected, and important”

A direct approach to the ultradiscrete KdV equation with negative

A generalisation of the ultra-discrete KdV equation is investigated using a direct approach. We show that evolution through one time step serves to reveal the entire solitonic content of the system

Brussels blog round up for 17– 23 November: Budget troubles, France is downgraded, and are European young farmers facing extinction?

Chris Gilson and Stuart A Brown take a look at the week in Brussels blogging

Systemic inflammation and residual viraemia in HIV-positive adults on protease inhibitor monotherapy: a cross-sectional study.

Increased levels of markers of systemic inflammation have been associated with serious non-AIDS events even in patients on fully suppressive antiretroviral therapy. We explored residual viremia and systemic inflammation markers in patients effectively treated with ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor monotherapy (PImono)

Reconstitution of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-specific T cell responses with treatment of human immunodeficiency virus/HBV coinfection

Liver-related mortality is an increasing problem in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/hepatitis B virus (HBV)-coinfected patients receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). In HIV-negative patients, HBV chronicity is associated with a reduction in specific T cell responses that can be partially restored by treatment with lamivudine. We studied 5 HIV/HBV-coinfected patients treated with HAART, either with or without addition of a drug with specific anti-HBV activity. Our data show that reconstitution of some HBV-specific T cell responses can also occur in HIV-positive patients after a reduction in HBV load. This potential to recover T cell responses, which has been thought to be critical for HBV control, provides support for the addition of anti-HBV therapy in the treatment of HIV/HBV-coinfected patients

A new species of Anadia (Reptilia, Squamata) from the Venezuelan 'Lost World', northern South America

A new gymnophthalmid lizard of the genus Anadia Gray, 1845 is described from the summit of Abakapá-tepui, Bolívar State, Venezuela, between 2200-2242 m elevation. The new species, Anadia mcdiarmidi sp. nov., is endemic to the Chimantá Massif and seemingly also occurs on Amurí-tepui and Murei-tepui. The new taxon is mainly distinguished from all known congeners by the following combination of characters: body fairly robust, dorsal scales small and quadrangular, middorsal scales 53-57, suboculars large, subequal in size, with sometimes one scale slightly protruding downward between 4th and 5th supralabial, nasal entire, without sub-nostril groove, body uniform beige or greyish to bluish brown in life, devoid of any conspicuous pattern in males, venter immaculate golden grey in life, femoral pores 9-10 on each side in males, preanal pores absent, hemipenis globose, weakly bilobed, bordered by numerous fl ounces (>20) bearing comblike rows of minute weakly mineralized spinules. The presence of a species of Anadia, a primarily Andean genus, on the top of tepuis is of considerable interest to the understanding of the Pantepui biogeography

voxEUROPP Episode 2: Eastern Europe and Democracy

Today EUROPP launches the second episode in our voxEUROPP series of podcasts. Presented by Chris Gilson and Stuart A Brown, voxEUROPP draws on academic experts from EUROPP to discuss the latest issues across European governance, economics, politics, culture and society, both at the European Union and national levels