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The article reports that while moves in the U.S. to make scientific research results available at the click of a mouse have generated intense debate, European research organizations have quietly been forging ahead. Slowly but surely, they are starting to build and connect institutional and even nationwide public archives that will, according to proponents, be the mega libraries of the future, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to access papers that result from publicly funded research. In France, the government's four major research institutes, 6 weeks ago jointly declared their intention to move toward open archives.

This article criticizes the editorial entitled "A challenge for the EU," by Pierre Papon published in the August 2003 issue of the journal "Science." Papon began his editorial by emphasizing the disparities in spending on research and development between the United States, Japan and the European Union (EU): 2.8%, 3.0% and 1.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) respectively. Against this background, Papon outlined the European Commissioners' plan to increase EU research and development spending to 3.0% of GDP and then devotes much of the rest of his editorial to EU proposals about spending on basic research in general and for a European Research Council (ERC) in particular. The differences in the research and development figures arise almost entirely from differences in spending by the private sector. Studies of research output whether measured by numbers of papers, citations, or major international prizes in relation to science base spending 3 to 5 years earlier, reveal very big differences among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with the top performers being Switzerland, Sweden and Israel. Indicators reveal that Europe is investing globally less in research than the United States and the recent trend is not favorable to Europe, because the U.S. industry has continuously increased its research and development funding. Furthermore, funds provided by foundations to academic science are certainly higher in the United States than in Europe.

Reports research which studied the output of scientific papers in Europe. London leading in total output; Cambridge leading in papers per capita; Value of study for local governments; Survey done by Matthiessen and Schwarz, Technical Knowledge Center of Denmark; Statistical details; Trends in specific fields.

Reports on the European Commission's (EU) call for greater influence in European science policy. EU's paper on improving coordination among national research programs of EU members; Commission's aim to create programs run by EU but funded voluntarily by EU members; Factions endorsing the paper.

The article features the views given by readers and response of the author regarding "International Conservation Policy Delivers Benefits for Birds in Europe." Roland Rodriguez-Muñoz and colleagues commented that the author's conclusions are overstatements based on unsuitable data and inappropriate analysis. Donald replied that Rodriguez-Muñoz and colleagues stressed that the results of their experiments are robust to the different assumptions of uncertainty surrounding trend estimates and the criticisms of the methods are attributed from misunderstanding of the original paper.

The article reports on the ongoing quest for free access to the results of publicly funded research of which European Union (EU) research organizations had signed an online petition for the European Commission to take action on the so-called open access. There were 14,000 researchers and 500 research institutes had signed the petition. While traditional scientific publishers claimed that the future of scientific communication as well as their €3 billion worth European industry is at risk. At the moment, the publishers' claim was honored and that the commission failed to enact a mandatory open-access policy for EU-funded scientists. Advocates of the open-access contend that scientific papers should be available to everyone for free.

This article reports that a Swedish anthropologist has found the first evidence of dental modification by early Europeans. The anthropologist has found that young men in Viking-age Scandinavia filed deep furrows into their upper front teeth. Caroline Arcini of the National Heritage Board in Lund, discovered the marks on the 1000-year-old skeletons of 24 young males, which were among several hundred skeletons unearthed from four different cemeteries in southern Sweden and held in storage in several museum collections. Arcini thinks earlier researchers assumed the dental marks to be from wear or damage. But the furrows were clearly filed intentionally and with a great deal of skill. She presented her reports in a paper in press at the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology." She speculates that the men filled the grooves with a colored substance such as wax or fat mixed with pigment to make the marks more visible. George Milner, an archaeologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, who has studied similar dental modifications in prehistoric North Americans, says such marks usually indicate a social group affiliation.

This article reports that Europe's biggest HIV research organization, the 49 million dollars French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis has a new director. Jean-François Delfraissy, a clinician at the forefront of HIV research and treatment since the early 1980s and most recently director of internal medicine at Bicêtre Hospital in Paris, has authored more than 200 papers and played a key role in many clinical trials, including the first one to show the effectiveness of AZT against mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He has also promoted ANRS's recent expansion into hepatitis B and C research. Joep Lange, past president of the International AIDS Society, who predicts that Delfraissy's accessible style will help foster international collaborations. Delfraissy succeeds Michel Kazatchkine, who in February became the French government's ambassador in the fight against AIDS.

West Nile virus has walloped the United States each year since it arrived in 1999. Mysteriously, however, there have been few human outbreaks in Europe, even though the virus is endemic there, and the birds that harbor it and the mosquitoes that transmit it are similar to those in the United States. Now, genetic analyses of mosquitoes from five continents suggest a controversial explanation for this mystery: U.S. mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus may be hybrids of two strains. The paper's authors, led by Dina Fonseca of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who was working with Richard Wilkerson of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, focused on a complex of mosquitoes called Culex pipiens.