EU Commission participation in the Troika mission: is there a European Union price to pay?

The article is intended to debate two questions regarding the involvement of the Commission in the Troika's action: firstly, considering the nature of financial assistance programs, it aims to discuss the effect of the Commission's participation in Troika negotiations on the balance of power of the EU institutions; and secondly, the article raises the issue of the Commission's liability for the results achieved by the financial assistance program, taking into account the extent of the conditions imposed, as well as the intensity of scrutiny by the Troika.

Time-variations of equivalent water heights'from Grace Mission and in-situ river stages in the Amazon basin

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission is dedicated to measuring temporal variations of the Earth's gravity field. In this study, the Stokes coefficients made available by Groupe de Recherche en Géodésie Spatiale (GRGS) at a 10-day interval were converted into equivalent water height (EWH) for a ~4-year period in the Amazon basin (from July-2002 to May-2006). The seasonal amplitudes of EWH signal are the largest on the surface of Earth and reach ~ 1250mm at that basin's center. Error budget represents ~130 mm of EWH, including formal errors on Stokes coefficient, leakage errors (12 ~ 21 mm) and spectrum truncation (10 ~ 15 mm). Comparison between in situ river level time series measured at 233 ground-based hydrometric stations (HS) in the Amazon basin and vertically-integrated EWH derived from GRACE is carried out in this paper. Although EWH and HS measure different water bodies, in most of the cases a high correlation (up to ~80%) is detected between the HS series and EWH series at the same site. This correlation allows adjusting linear relationships between in situ and GRACE-based series for the major tributaries of the Amazon river. The regression coefficients decrease from up to down stream along the rivers reaching the theoretical value 1 at the Amazon's mouth in the Atlantic Ocean. The variation of the regression coefficients versus the distance from estuary is analysed for the largest rivers in the basin. In a second step, a classification of the proportionality between in situ and GRACE time-series is proposed.

Enraizamento de estacas em cultivares de oliveiras promissores para a Serra da Mantiqueira

O objetivo deste trabalho foi verificar o enraizamento de estacas de diferentes cultivares de oliveiras, utilizando, como substratos, perlita e areia. Estacas semilenhosas de oliveira dos cultivares Maria da Fé, Mission, Penafiel, Grappolo 575, Galega, Ascolano 315 e Grappolo 541 foram coletadas em janeiro e preparadas, com aproximadamente 12 cm de comprimento, quatro milímetros de diâmetro e com quatro entrenós, mantendo-se, nos dois primeiros, quatro folhas. Todas as estacas foram imersas por cinco segundos em solução contendo 3 g L-1 de AIB. As estacas foram colocadas para enraizar em bandejas plásticas, com perlita ou areia como substrato, em estufas com sistema de nebulização intermitente. Aos substratos, foi adicionado o fertilizante Nippoterra® (diluição de 25 g L-1), na dosagem de 62 mL de solução por litro de substrato. Após 61 dias do estaqueamento, foi mensurada a percentagem de estacas enraizadas, de estacas calejadas e número médio de raízes. Concluiu-se que as estacas dos cultivares Ascolano 315 e Maria da Fé apresentaram os melhores resultados. A areia como substrato propiciou aumento da capacidade de enraizamento das estacas de oliveira.