In an international collaboration of regulators and industry, JRC scientists contributed to the compilation of overarching principles for the safety assessment of cosmetics without animal testing.
According to the January 2019 issue of the JRC MARS Crop monitoring in Europe Bulletin, which was published today, winter crops in western and southern Europe have acquired little frost tolerance due to mild winter temperatures so far.
Meanwhile, in central and eastern Europe, the frost tolerance of winter cereals has increased considerably since mid-December, following the arrival of colder wintry weather conditions.
Since the start of winter, frost damage in the EU has been mostly limited to minor occurrences.
JRC scientists developed a rapid, field-deployable screening method to help customs laboratories identify new psychoactive substances (NPS).
The consumption of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is growing continuously with new molecules constantly appearing on the drug market.
JRC scientists analysed the availability of suitable standards for the regulation of nanomedicines. With this they aim to anticipate needs for test development and standardisation, to support a smooth translation of promising health products to the market.
An unclear regulatory environment can contribute to uncertainties for product developers and regulators when it comes to the regulatory approval of innovative products for clinical applications.
According to the December edition of the JRC's Anomaly Hotspots of Agricultural Production (ASAP) assessment, dry conditions during the short rains in East Africa have led to below-average harvests in several countries in the region, whereas, in the southern part of the continent, crop conditions are affected by mid-season dryness. Winter cereal development continues to be favourable in the Middle East and Central Asia, whereas hot and dry conditions need to be monitored closely in North Africa.
Citizen science is the non-professional involvement of volunteers in the scientific process, whether in the data collection phase or in other phases of the research.
It can be a powerful tool for environmental management that has the potential to inform an increasingly complex environmental policy landscape and to meet the growing demands from society for more participatory decision-making.
JRC scientists have published a series of papers assessing the availability and applicability of computational models in the safety assessment of nanomaterials, with a view to promoting their further development and use in regulatory decision making.
A recent JRC article that maps copper (Cu) concentration in European Union topsoils finds that vineyards, olive groves and orchards have the highest concentration levels of all land use categories.
The study concludes and land use and management are the major cause of changes in soil Cu concentrations, and highlights the need for more sustainable, environmentally aware and soil friendly land management practices in order to limit the environmental and health risk associated with high copper concentrations in vineyards.
Global biodiversity - the variety of plant and animal life on Earth - is a hot topic lately. As we face into the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history, scientists and concerned members of the public look for ways to help preserve and enhance biodiversity, in order to maintain human well-being and a healthy planet.
To efficiently manage global biodiversity, we need some way of recording and measuring biodiversity and how it is changing.
JRC scientists compiled information on current legislation of EU Member States, as well as of Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, applying to genomics technologies, and draw the attention to some fragmentation and heterogeneity in addressing genomics in policy.
With the advent of fast, high efficiency and low cost DNA sequencing techniques, the ability to study the human genome by reading the sequence of its DNA is growing exponentially, with a resulting significant impact on many fields of scientific research.
