Several countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe used a rich set of prudential instruments during the recent credit and housing boom and bust cycles. We construct a comprehensive ...database of these policy measures covering 16 countries at a quarterly frequency. We use this database to investigate whether the policy measures had an impact on housing price inflation. The measures that appeared to be effective were capital measures (minimum capital adequacy ratio, maximum ratio of lending to households to share capital) and nonstandard liquidity measures (marginal reserve requirements (MRRs) on foreign funding, MRRs linked to credit growth).
The genomic history of southeastern Europe Mathieson, Iain; Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Songül; Posth, Cosimo ...
Nature (London),
03/2018, Volume:
555, Issue:
7695
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-seventh millennium bc, and was associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the southeast before spreading throughout Europe. Here, to ...understand the dynamics of this process, we analysed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12000 and 500 bc. We document a west-east cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and, in eastern Europe, the early stages in the formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe dispersed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some early groups in the southeast mixed extensively with hunter-gatherers without the sex-biased admixture that prevailed later in the north and west. We also show that southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between east and west after the arrival of farmers, with intermittent genetic contact with steppe populations occurring up to 2,000 years earlier than the migrations from the steppe that ultimately replaced much of the population of northern Europe.
This study sought to systematically review the existing literature on self-reported unmet healthcare needs in Southeastern Europe.
A systematic literature review of quantitative evidence in English ...and Bulgarian was performed in July 2023 using the following databases: Medline, Embase and EconLit. Publications were only included if they used self-reported unmet healthcare needs as an indicator of access to healthcare, concerned people living in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia or Romania and if they were published after 2003. Quality assessment of the included publications was performed using the Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS) tool.
Twenty-three publications of varying quality were included in the review. Significantly more evidence was available for Greece, Bulgaria and Romania than for the rest of the region. Data collected through Pan-European surveys were commonly used, but almost half of the studies were only descriptive. Generally, the prevalence of unmet healthcare needs has decreased over the years. Unmet healthcare needs were higher among people of lower socioeconomic and educational status, ethnic minorities and migrants and high cost was consistently identified as the primary barrier to accessing healthcare.
Unmet healthcare needs are more prevalent among already disadvantaged societal groups. A trend of a declining prevalence of unmet needs has been observed, but it is more notable in the more socioeconomically developed countries. Improving financial protection should be a priority for the healthcare systems.
•FWI thresholds for 4 fire danger classes are identified, adopted to Greek conditions.•Weather and fire data at municipality level on a daily basis for 17-yrs are used.•Predictive performance of new ...FWI thresholds vs the EFFIS ones is highly improved.•Overestimation of danger decreases, reliability of danger classification increases.
The objective of the following paper is to identify weather-related thresholds for wildfire danger, i.e., the potential extent of fire, based on local weather conditions. The target area is Greece, a wildfire prone Mediterranean country which experienced on average 2000 wildfires annually over the last two decades. Initially, the Fire Weather Index (FWI) component of the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System (FWI System) adopted by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), is evaluated with respect to its wildfire danger predictive ability. Hence, weather and wildfire data at municipality level and on a daily basis, for the period 2000–2016 are exploited. The analysis showed that the FWI thresholds proposed by EFFIS for assessing the level of fire danger in Europe are too low for the case of Greece and, therefore, are not representative of the country's fire weather conditions. Two statistical approaches, cluster analysis and non-linear least-squares regression, are subsequently applied to determine the most appropriate FWI thresholds for discrete levels of wildfire danger. The results are presented in 4 sets of FWI thresholds and they are further evaluated on the basis of verification measures. All sets of FWI thresholds were found to significantly improve the predictability of wildfire danger compared to the EFFIS fire danger class thresholds. In particular, two of them were found to meet selected performance requirements for a balanced predictive performance, namely a reduced overestimation of wildfire danger and increased reliability in danger classification. The results are expected to have significant practical implications for wildfire prevention and risk mitigation strategies implemented by the forest fire control agencies of the country.
•The revised and extended Bulgarian archaeomagnetic database is presented.•28 newly studied features are included as reference points.•Magnetic characteristics of unpublished reference points are ...summarized.•Reference geomagnetic curves for Bulgaria are presented.•The specified data are important contribution to the global archaeomagnetic database.
The efforts of geophysicists to describe geomagnetic field behaviour in the past lead to creation of different geomagnetic field models. On the other hand, the established regional palaeosecular variations of geomagnetic elements are increasingly used for dating purposes in archaeology. Both of these goals can be achieved if sufficient amounts of long archaeomagnetic data sets exist for different geographical regions. The accumulation of archaeomagnetic determinations began at the middle of the last century, parallel with the progressive development of experimental methodology and acceptance criteria. The presence of great number of old determinations requires their critical assessment. The important question about the reliability of the associated dating intervals should be also re-assessed. All this requires the continuous refinement and extension of the accumulated databases. This paper presents the last synthesis of Bulgarian archaeomagnetic database and the local palaeosecular variation curves obtained using a statistical treatment based on Bayesian approach (RenCurve software). The rock-magnetic characteristics of the newly included, non-published results are summarized.
Abstract
Cesarean delivery rates are rapidly increasing in Southeastern Europe (to more than 60%), North Africa (with a rate as high as 72% in Egypt), and in urban areas in Southern Africa (a rate of ...over 50% in Lagos, Nigeria). Data on the background to these increases are scarce, but likely to include poor birthing facilities in general hospitals, convenience for the doctor, private medicine, fear of litigation, socioeconomic status, shortage of midwives and nurses, and disappearance of vaginal instrumental deliveries. Options to reverse cesarean delivery trends are discussed. In this context there is a need to be better informed about how women are being counseled regarding vaginal or cesarean delivery. The long‐term consequences in subsequent pregnancies for mothers and children may well be largely ignored, while these risks are highest in LMICs where higher birth numbers are desired. FIGO has begun discussions with obstetric and gynecologic societies, healthcare bodies, and governments in several countries discussed in this article, to find ways to lower the cesarean delivery rate. The requests came from the countries themselves, which may prove beneficial in helping advance progress.
Synopsis
Cesarean delivery rates are rapidly increasing in southeastern Europe, North Africa, and in urban areas in Southern Africa, prompting a time for reflection.
•We overviewed abiotic disturbances in Bulgarian mountain coniferous forests.•Fires and windthrows were most numerous followed by avalanches and snow-breakages.•Fires dominated in pine forests, but ...were also recorded in spruce forests.•Windthrows dominated in spruce forests with few cases in pine forests.•Snow-breakages affected mostly 40–60 years dense pine forests.
Disturbances are among the most important processes that shape forest dynamics and landscapes. However the historic ranges of variability (HRV) of many coniferous forests in Europe and specifically in the mountains on the Balkan Peninsula are not well understood. We present the first overview of available data on disturbance events in coniferous forests in the high mountains in southwestern Bulgaria. Our study included data from historical publications, documents and archives, newer documentary data obtained through interviews with foresters and verified using satellite images, published studies and new tree-ring data. We documented at least 188 abiotic disturbance events in the Bulgarian mountains including fires (39%), windthrows (31%) and avalanches (20%) and fewer disturbances caused by snow and ice.
Fires primarily affected Pine-dominated ecosystems, especially pure Pinus sylvestris and mixed Pinus sylvestris-Pinus nigra forests. Our tree-ring analysis also provided evidence for repeated fires in subalpine Pinus heldreichii and Pinus peuce forests during the last 500 years. Some of these fires affected different valleys within the same year, suggesting either large-scale events or the simultaneous occurrence of fires related to appropriate fuel and climate conditions. We also found data on several large fires in Picea abies-dominated ecosystems. Most of the fires were less than 100 ha, but some were larger, the most extensive of which was the Batalach fire (year 1890, approximately 9000 ha) in the Western Rhodopes. The highest frequency of fires was in 1880–1910, 1940–1950 and 2000–2010. We found evidence for at least 59 windthrows greater than 1ha, mainly in pure Picea abies and mixed Picea abies-Pinus sylvestris forests. There was high variability in the size of windthrows, ranging from small-scale, gap-sized blowdowns to large and infrequent disturbances affecting more than 300ha, the largest of which was the Beglika windthrow (1961, 3000ha). Although avalanches are considered important for subalpine forests on steep slopes they were generally poorly documented and data were limited to several avalanche cycles in 1955, 1963–1974 and in the last two decades. Snow-related damage was important mostly for young pine forests in which several events affected a high stock of wood in the 1930s, 1987, 1988 and 2015.
Our data show that natural disturbances of various types and of a range of sizes are part of the natural dynamics of coniferous forests in Bulgaria. Further, our study contributes to the understanding of the historic range of variability of mountain forests in Europe.
This paper investigates the dynamic short-term and long-term relationships among real GDP per capita, energy consumption, urbanization, and carbon dioxide emissions within the framework of the ...environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for Southeastern Europe (SEE) from 1997 to 2014. The evidence highlights an inverted U-shaped nexus between real GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions (i.e., the EKC hypothesis is verified in the long-run in the sample as a whole). The short-run estimates provide evidence of inverted U-shaped EKC only for Greece and Moldova. Two-way causal relationship between urbanization and pollutant emission was also established in the short-run, as well as one-way causality flowing from real GDP per capita to pollutant emission. The coefficients with the real GDP per capita and energy consumption are negative and statistically significant in the long-term. These findings indicate the existence of an error correction mechanism that drives the observed variables back to their equilibrium. Moreover, the findings show that the consistent increase in energy consumption has not reduced environmental pressures.
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