Creating a way out of the maze: supporting sustainable futures for displaced persons

As displacement continues to rise globally, more and more people are 'stuck' in situations of protracted displacement, where they find themselves in a long-term situation of vulnerability, dependency and legal insecurity, lacking or actively denied opportunities to rebuild their lives. While the protracted nature of many conflicts is a critical contributing factor, there is considerable room for improvement in policies and practices to more effectively address protracted displacement - and an urgent need to strengthen responses. The complicated 'maze' of international, national and local laws, policies and practices often backfires, exacerbating precarity and preventing many displaced persons from finding sustainable solutions for themselves and from contributing to receiving communities. It is not only the widening gap between the scale of displacement and the solutions offered but also the diversity of individual profiles and experiences that underscores the urgent need to expand the range of solutions so that more displaced persons can find long-term prospects. A paradigm shift that places people at the heart of solutions, meaning that countries enable displaced persons to make use of their own capacities, would open new doors for people to become 'self-reliant'. Such an approach is not only vital for addressing existing protracted situations - but it can also help prevent those more recently displaced from finding themselves in protracted situations in the future. The lessons below highlight critical entry points for European stakeholders seeking solutions for (protracted) displacement

Moving on: how easing mobility restrictions within Europe can help forced migrations rebuild their lives

Free movement within the Schengen area is a cornerstone of European integration - and indeed an essential part of the European way of life. However, this freedom of movement is limited for forcibly displaced people residing within the European Union (EU). European asylum systems are designed to suppress mobility, which actually prevents many asylum seekers from finding a 'durable solution'. In contrast, enabling legal mobility within and across EU countries, when paired with access to labour markets and ensuring the right to family life, can open new opportunities for forced migrants to settle into receiving communities and truly rebuild their lives. Based on TRAFIG research in Greece and Italy, this policy brief illustrates why mobility is important for displaced people and how it is being hampered by policies and practices. It then suggests strategic ways that policymakers can tap into the potential of mobility to provide additional solutions to protracted displacement in Europe

BioMAJ: a flexible framework for databanks synchronization and processing

Large- and medium-scale computational molecular biology projects require accurate bioinformatics software and numerous heterogeneous biological databanks, which are distributed around the world. BioMAJ provides a flexible, robust, fully automated environment for managing such massive amounts of data. The JAVA application enables automation of the data update cycle process and supervision of the locally mirrored data repository. We have developed workflows that handle some of the most commonly used bioinformatics databases. A set of scripts is also available for post-synchronization data treatment consisting of indexation or format conversion (for NCBI blast, SRS, EMBOSS, GCG, etc.). BioMAJ can be easily extended by personal homemade processing scripts. Source history can be kept via html reports containing statements of locally managed databanks

Potential Analysis for Further Nature Conservation in Azerbaijan: A Spatial and Political Investment Strategy

Financed by the MAVA Foundation (Switzerland), the Michael Succow Foundation (MSF), in cooperation with various experts from Azerbaijan, conducted a detailed gap analysis of potential future protected areas in Azerbaijan. This report presents the results of this project and constitutes a part of the strategy of the MSF: to provide sound background information on the biological value and its further potential for protection in Azerbaijan. From the very beginning of the foundation’s engagement in Azerbaijan nine years ago, the sciencebased protection of landscapes and species has been the main focus of our work in the country.researc

GrassPlot v. 2.00 – first update on the database of multi-scale plant diversity in Palaearctic grasslands

Abstract: GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phyto- coenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of GrassPlot. The current version (GrassPlot v. 2.00) contains a total of 190,673 plots of different grain sizes across 28,171 independent plots, with 4,654 nested-plot series including at least four grain sizes. The database has improved its content as well as its functionality, including addition and harmonization of header data (land use, information on nestedness, structure and ecology) and preparation of species composition data. Currently, GrassPlot data are intensively used for broad-scale analyses of different aspects of alpha and beta diversity in grassland ecosystems

Membrane-enclosed multienzyme (MEME) synthesis of 2,7-anhydro-sialic acid derivatives

Naturally occurring 2,7-anhydro-alpha-N-acetylneuraminic acid (2,7-anhydro-Neu5Ac) is a transglycosylation product of bacterial intramolecular trans-sialidases (IT-sialidases). A facile one-pot two-enzyme approach has been established for the synthesis of 2,7-anhydro-sialic acid derivatives including those containing different sialic acid forms such as Neu5Ac and N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc). The approach is based on the use of Ruminoccocus gnavus IT-sialidase for the release of 2,7-anhydro-sialic acid from glycoproteins, and the conversion of free sialic acid by a sialic acid aldolase. This synthetic method, which is based on a membrane-enclosed enzymatic synthesis, can be performed on a preparative scale. Using fetuin as a substrate, high-yield and cost-effective production of 2,7-anhydro-Neu5Ac was obtained to high-purity. This method was also applied to the synthesis of 2,7-anhydro-Neu5Gc. The membrane-enclosed multienzyme (MEME) strategy reported here provides an efficient approach to produce a variety of sialic acid derivatives

Caipirini: using gene sets to rank literature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Keeping up-to-date with bioscience literature is becoming increasingly challenging. Several recent methods help meet this challenge by allowing literature search to be launched based on lists of abstracts that the user judges to be 'interesting'. Some methods go further by allowing the user to provide a second input set of 'uninteresting' abstracts; these two input sets are then used to search and rank literature by relevance. In this work we present the service 'Caipirini' (<url>http://caipirini.org</url>) that also allows two input sets, but takes the novel approach of allowing ranking of literature based on one or more sets of genes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To evaluate the usefulness of Caipirini, we used two test cases, one related to the human cell cycle, and a second related to disease defense mechanisms in <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>. In both cases, the new method achieved high precision in finding literature related to the biological mechanisms underlying the input data sets.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>To our knowledge Caipirini is the first service enabling literature search directly based on biological relevance to gene sets; thus, Caipirini gives the research community a new way to unlock hidden knowledge from gene sets derived via high-throughput experiments.</p

Climate-influenced migration in Bangladesh: the need for a policy realignment

Recent research into migration in Bangladesh has highlighted that people migrate for better livelihoods, not necessarily in response to climatic stresses and shocks. If facilitated appropriately, internal and international migration can help build adaptive capacity to future environmental and climatic hazards. In this framing, migration happens in the context of a growing city-centred economy that promotes remittances to villages. However, a textual analysis of current and recent policies concerning climate change, development and poverty alleviation, and disaster management shows that the economic and adaptive roles of internal migration are often not included in policy framing. We argue that if migration works as a positive step towards adaptation, then the key challenge is to align the policies with this new understanding