The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a per-capita GDP level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget. This rule gives rise to a regression-discontinuity design that exploits the discrete jump in the prob...

Innovations, especially technological, are considered key-drivers for sustainable economic growth and competitiveness in the globalised world. As such they should also play an important role in the process of economical convergence inside the EU. Unfortunately, the problem of insufficient innovation performance concerns around half of the EU countries. Poland shows that a lack of a consistent h...

Humour in Britain is appreciated for its quirkiness and ironic elf-deprecation and can sometimes seem baffling to the outside orld. The outcome of the recent United Kingdom referendum here a narrow-ish majority voted to leave the European Union s certainly perplexing to most onlookers and, if its consequences ere not so far-reaching, might be laughed off as an illustration of uch absurd humour....

BACKGROUND The European Public Health Association (EUPHA) proposed and led PHIRE (Public Health Innovation and Research in Europe), with co-financing by the European Commission, to assess public health innovation and research at national level in Europe. PHIRE was also designed to promote organizational development and capacity building of EUPHA. We assess the success and limitations of using E...

In subjective terms, Polish SME sector occupies a prominent position in the national economic development, in which planning of the management strategies should be primarily based on identifying and meeting the innovation needs. As a research sample, there is chosen a printing sector of industry. SMEs share in printing sector in Poland is estimated at the level of 81% of all enterprises. In rec...

Small fresh water fishes such as the zebrafish (Danio rerio) have become important model organisms for biomedical research. They currently represent the best vertebrate embryo models in which it is possible to derive quantitative data on gene expression, signaling events, and cell behavior in real time in the living animal. Relevant phenotypes in fish mutants are similar to those of other verte...

This study was conducted in order to map European research in chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs). It was intended to assist the European Commission and other research funders to identify gaps and overlaps in their portfolios, and to suggest ways in which they could improve the effectiveness of their support and increase the impact of the research on patient care and on the reduction of the inc...

The following information is missing from the Funding section: This study received institutional support from the Czech Academy of Sciences (RVO:60077344, http://www.avcr.cz/) and the CEKOPOT project (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0204), co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic. Additionally, this study was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (Proje...

The European Forum on Epilepsy Research (ERF2013), which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on May 26-29, 2013, was designed to appraise epilepsy research priorities in Europe through consultation with clinical and basic scientists as well as representatives of lay organizations and health care providers. The ultimate goal was to provide a platform to improve the lives of persons with epilepsy by i...