Health Check of the CAP: What’s at stake? Egmont - European Affairs Publication, April 2008

At the end of 2007, the European Commission launched the Health Check (HC) of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). After a consultation with all stakeholders, legislative proposals were made in May 2008, on which the Agricultural Council is intending to agree before the end of 20081 which will be under the French EU Presidency The role of the European Parliament is consultative, but it would receive co-decision power once the Lisbon Treaty enters into force. This paper will try to indicate what is at play in the discussion on the HC, because the interests concerned are more diverse than we may assume. The debate on the HC is directly or indirectly linked with a wide range of issues that are of importance to the society. Of course, agriculture has always been about food production. But in rural areas, agriculture is not only an important economic factor but also an element of the regional policy and a strong incentive for decent land management. Furthermore, European consumers demand agricultural products of the highest quality, produced in an environmentally friendly way, with respect for animal life and health. Moreover, the surge of bio-energy has created another outlet for agriculture, namely contributing to a diversified and secure energy supply. Finally, European agriculture does not stand on itself. Finally, in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations in the Doha Development Agenda, European agriculture is under pressure to reduce more trade distorting elements of its CAP

Tuberculosis vaccine strain _Mycobacterium bovis_ BCG Russia is a natural _recA_ mutant

The current tuberculosis vaccine is a live vaccine derived from _Mycobacterium bovis_ and attenuated by serial _in vitro_ passaging. All vaccine substrains in use stem from one source, strain Bacille Calmette-Guérin. However, they differ in regions of genomic deletions, antigen expression levels, immunogenicity, and protective efficacy. As a RecA phenotype increases genetic stability and may contribute restricting the ongoing evolution of the various BCG substrains, we aimed to inactivate _recA_ by allelic replacement in BCG vaccine strains representing different phylogenetic lineages (Pasteur, Frappier, Denmark, Russia). Homologous gene replacement was successful in three out of four strains. However, only illegitimate recombination was observed in BCG substrain Russia. Sequence analyses of _recA_ revealed that a single nucleotide insertion in the 5' part of _recA_ led to a translational frameshift with an early stop codon making BCG Russia a natural _recA_ mutant. At the protein level BCG Russia failed to express RecA. According to phylogenetic analyses BCG Russia is an ancient vaccine strain most closely related to the parental _M. bovis_. Our data suggest that _recA_ inactivation in BCG Russia occurred early and is in part responsible for its high degree of genomic stability, resulting in a substrain that has less genetic alterations than other vaccine substrains with respect to _M. bovis_ AF2122/97 wild type

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Rhythm and Time in Music Epitomize the Temporal Dynamics of Human Communicative Behavior: The Broad Implications of London's Trinity

Three key issues about rhythm and timing in music are drawn to the attention of linguists in a paper by London (2012). In this commentary, I argue that these issues are relevant not only to linguists, but also to those in any field dealing with the temporal dynamics of human communicative behavior. Thus, the distinction between endogenously and exogenously driven mechanisms of perceptual organization, the active nature of perception, and the presence of multiple time scales are topics that also concern experimental psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists. London’s argument that these three issues play a crucial role in the perception of rhythm and timing implies that they should be considered collectively when attempting to understand diverse communicative acts