THE EU AIR TRANSPORT SECTOR IN THE POST 9/11 ERA

The terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001 in New York have been putting the air transport sector in de world and the European Union in a deep crisis. The deregulation of the EU air transport market was already fully accomplished before the tragic events of 9/11. The policy was based on free fare setting and market access, on a fair competitive environment and on common licensing rules for air carriers. In order to eliminate any other unfair cross border competition in the EU air transport sector, complementary actions were adopted by the EU in the post 9/11 era. Only a minority of these actions were a direct response to the new security problems. In the meantime the EU demonstrated the ambition to consolidate its air transport policy with many third countries by expanding the European Common Aviation Area. The Croatian government participates in this project. Most business players in the EU air transport market continued the same strategies in the post 9/11 era as they used before, although sometimes in varying degrees of frequency and intensity. High emphasis was put on more efficiency and cost cutting. Typical strategies are membership of alliances, outsourcing non core activities or the focus on niche markets, such as cargo, low-cost and regional operations, leisure and executive business air transport. In case of future EU membership, Croatia has to adopt the complete legislation – called acquis communautaire - in the field of EU air transport. Problems are not expected because Croatia is already aligned as a member of the European Common Aviation Area. On the business side can be observed that Croatia Airlines is part of the EU air transport network via membership of the Star alliance and other code share agreements. Croatian domestic and international air routes are very suitable for low-cost and regional operations. A lot of competition in this field can be expected from foreign carriers

Myocardial Doppler velocities as a marker of prognosis in the ICU

Relatively simple measures of echocardiography and Doppler, as left ventricular end-systolic area and volume, should be taken in consideration when performing a Doppler echocardiographic examination, as they could have both clinical and prognostic value

PROŠIRENJE EUROPSKE UNIJE

Starting in 1957 with six countries, the EU of 27 has become today the largest economic integration bloc in the world. The new candidate member states are Croatia, FYROM, and Turkey, followed by the potential candidates Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia. Albania applied for membership on 28 April 2009. Geographical and cultural limitations eventually will determine the maximum absolute size of the European Union. The optimum size however could be lower than the absolute maximum number of member states. Academic research about optimum size is based on theories about club size, economic integration and convergence. Frequently political decisions in favor for enlargement overrule the economic rationale for the optimum size of the EU. Since 1993 the Copenhagen criteria determine the preconditions for membership. Besides the ability to cope with the obligations of membership – the so called “acquis communautaire” – and the economic criteria, the highest priority often goes to the political requirement of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and protection of minorities. The EU offers help to countries that are in the process of meeting the Copenhagen criteria. For the candidate member countries the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) is available, and the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) for the potential candidate countries. There is no evidence for the existence of a positive correlation between the size of the EU and the capacity to solve the problems of the actual economic crisis. Deficit spending by the EU is not possible due to the restrictions of the budget. The European Central Bank (ECB) has been applying an expansionary monetary policy by frequent interest rate cuts, but the impact only applies to the 16 euro countries. The EU Commission has been demonstrating a tolerant attitude against various types of state support which has been given by member states to sectors in trouble. An overall recovery action plan as in the US is not possible in the EU, as there is no mandate for such an action plan and because of insufficient funding.Počevši 1957. Godine sa šest zemalja, danas je EU postal najveći integrirani ekonomski blok na svijeti sa svojih 27 članica.Nove članice kandidati su Hrvatska,FYROM i Turska, zajedno sa potencijalnim kandidatima Bosnom i Hercegovinom, Kososvom, Crnom Gorom I Srbijo. Albanija je aplicirala za članstvo 28. travnja 2009. Konačan i apsolutan obim Europske Unije odridetit će geografske i kulturalne granice. Optimalna veličina mogla bi biti manja od apsolutnog maksimuma država članica. Akademska istraživanja o optimalnom broju temelje se na teorijama o veličini udruženja te ekonomskoj integraciji i konvergenciji. Česte političke odluke koje idu u prilog povećanju nadjačavaju ekonomsku opravdanost za optimalnom veličinom EU. Od 1993.Kopenhagenskim kriterijem su utvrđeni potrebni preduvjeti za članstvo. Pored mogućnosti da se nosi sa obvezama članstva - takozvanim“acquis communautaire” – te ekonomskm kriterijima, najvažniji je politička potreba za demokracijom, pravom, poštivanjem ljudskih prava i zaštitom manjina. EU nudi pomoć zemljama koji su u procesu stjecanja Kopenhaških kriterija. Za članice kandidate dostupan je Instrument za predpristupnu pomoć (IPA), i Instrument europske granične i partnerske pomoći (ENPI) potencijalnim članicama kandidaima. Ne postoji dokaz za pozitivnu korelaciju između veličine EU i kapaciteta kako bi se riješili probleme aktualne ekonomske krize. Deficitarna potrošnja EU nije moguća zbog restrikcija u budžetu.Centralna Europska Banka (ECB) aplicirala je ekspanzionističku monetarnu politiku čestim smanjenjem kamatnih stopa, ali takav se utjecaj odnosi samo na 16 europskih zemalja. Komisija Eu pokazuje tolerantan stav prema različitim oblicima državne potpore koje su članice pružile problematičnim sektorima. Sveukupni akcijski plan za oporavak kao i u USA nije moguć u EU budući da ne postoji mandata za takav akcijski plan te zbog ndostatnih sredstava

Is tissue Doppler echocardiography the Holy Grail for the intensivist?

Assessment of left ventricular diastolic function in the critically ill patient remains a difficult issue in clinical practice. Combined use of routine transmitral and pulmonary venous Doppler patterns in conjunction with tissue Doppler imaging have been claimed to allow bedside diagnosis of diastolic dysfunction. Although in the previous issue of Critical Care it was clearly demonstrated there might be a difference in load dependency of the early myocardial tissue Doppler velocity between lateral and septal placed sample volume, there remain still several unanswered questions, particularly with respect to the preload dependency of these indices

Low flow extracorporeal CO2 removal in ARDS patients : a prospective short-term crossover pilot study

Background: Lung protective mechanical ventilation (MV) is the corner stone of therapy for ARDS. However, its use may be limited by respiratory acidosis. This study explored feasibility of, effectiveness and safety of low flow extracorporeal CO2 removal (ECCO2R). Methods: This was a prospective pilot study, using the Abylcap (R) (Bellco) ECCO2R, with crossover off-on-off design (2-h blocks) under stable MV settings, and follow up till end of ECCO2R. Primary endpoint for effectiveness was a 20% reduction of PaCO2 after the first 2-h. Adverse events (AE) were recorded prospectively. We included 10 ARDS patients on MV, with PaO2/FiO(2) = 5 cmH(2)O, FiO(2) titrated to SaO(2) 88-95%, plateau pressure >= 28 cmH(2)O, and respiratory acidosis (pH < 7.25). Results: After 2-h of ECCO2R, 6 patients had a >= 20% decrease in PaCO2 (60%); PaCO2 decreased 28.4% (from 58.4 to 48. 7 mmHg, p = 0.005), and pH increased (1.59%, p = 0.005). ECCO2R was hemodynamically well tolerated. During the whole period of ECCO2R, 6 patients had an AE (60%); bleeding occurred in 5 patients (50%) and circuit thrombosis in 3 patients (30%), these were judged not to be life threatening. Conclusions: In ARDS patients, low flow ECCO2R significantly reduced PaCO2 after 2 h, Follow up during the entire ECCO2R period revealed a high incidence of bleeding and circuit thrombosis

Fast analysis of decabrominated diphenyl ether using low-pressure gas chromatography electron-capture negative ionization mass spectrometry

Peer reviewe

An innovative integrated approach based on DNA walking to identify unauthorized GMOs

&lt;p&gt;In the next coming years, the frequency of unauthorized genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being present in the European food/feed chain will increase significantly. Rice already constitutes a challenge for laboratories developing methods to detect unauthorized GMOs. Indeed, in 2012, several genetic modified rices were detected in products imported from Asia, mainly from China. Therefore, we have developed a strategy to identify unauthorized GMOs containing a pCAMBIA family vector, frequently present in transgenic plants. The presented integrated approach is performed in two main successive steps on Bt rice grains. First, the potential presence of unauthorized GMOs is assessed by the qPCR SYBR&amp;reg;Green technology targeting the terminator 35S (t35S) pCAMBIA element, which allows discriminating pCAMBIA family vectors. Second, its presence is confirmed via the characterization of the junction between the transgenic cassette and the rice genome. To this end, a DNA walking strategy is applied using a first reverse primer followed by two semi-nested PCR rounds using primers that are each time nested to the previous reverse primer. The sensitivity of the method was assessed. This innovative approach allows to rapidly identifying the transgene flanking region and presents the advantage to be easily implementable in GMO routine analysis by the enforcement laboratories.&lt;/p&gt;</p

Detailed evaluation of data analysis tools for subtyping of bacterial isolates based on whole genome sequencing : Neisseria meningitidis as a proof of concept

Whole genome sequencing is increasingly recognized as the most informative approach for characterization of bacterial isolates. Success of the routine use of this technology in public health laboratories depends on the availability of well-characterized and verified data analysis methods. However, multiple subtyping workflows are now often being used for a single organism, and differences between them are not always well described. Moreover, methodologies for comparison of subtyping workflows, and assessment of their performance are only beginning to emerge. Current work focuses on the detailed comparison of WGS-based subtyping workflows and evaluation of their suitability for the organism and the research context in question. We evaluated the performance of pipelines used for subtyping of Neisseria meningitidis, including the currently widely applied cgMLST approach and different SNP-based methods. In addition, the impact of the use of different tools for detection and filtering of recombinant regions and of different reference genomes were tested. Our benchmarking analysis included both assessment of technical performance of the pipelines and functional comparison of the generated genetic distance matrices and phylogenetic trees. It was carried out using replicate sequencing datasets of high- and low-coverage, consisting mainly of isolates belonging to the clonal complex 269. We demonstrated that cgMLST and some of the SNP-based subtyping workflows showed very good performance characteristics and highly similar genetic distance matrices and phylogenetic trees with isolates belonging to the same clonal complex. However, only two of the tested workflows demonstrated reproducible results for a group of more closely related isolates. Additionally, results of the SNP-based subtyping workflows were to some level dependent on the reference genome used. Interestingly, the use of recombination-filtering software generally reduced the similarity between the gene-by-gene and SNP-based methodologies for subtyping of N. meningitidis. Our study, where N. meningitidis was taken as an example, clearly highlights the need for more benchmarking comparative studies to eventually contribute to a justified use of a specific WGS data analysis workflow within an international public health laboratory context