The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) poses a challenge for the scientific community to translate the ideas and principles into realistic and scientifically sound approaches for environmental health assessment. We develop assessment criteria for reproductive disorders in amphipods (embryo aberrations) as indicators of biological effects of contaminants. The project is funded by FORMAS.

The Journal of College of Sharia and Islamic Studies (JCSIS) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal affiliated with Qatar University that publishes articles from around the world in both Arabic and English. The journal provides a forum for quality research in multidisciplinary classical and contemporary Islamic studies. Founded in 1980, the JCSIS is a valuable resource for both scholars and students of Islamic studies. JCSIS encourages contributions related to all fields of Islamic studies. The journal aims to deepen historical research on Islam, and it publishes papers that address historical and social science perspectives spanning the period ranging from Islam’s emergence to modern times.

Commissioned by Springer Nature, this work provides a preliminary evidence base on the current and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on research activities within universities. As nations look to scientists for a pathway out of the current crisis, our report presents the perspectives of 25 senior research leaders and managers, based in Australia, Europe, Singapore and the UK, on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores:

- Implications of the pandemic for researchers themselves, the information infrastructure they rely on, and the funding on which they depend.

- The early interventions being put in place by universities, research funders and governments to safeguard the research enterprise.

- The actions that are needed to preserve and strengthen research capacity and capability, through the pandemic and beyond.

Breast cancer is the most prevalent kind of cancer in the world, and medical practitioners are keen to stress the role diet, exercise, and environmental pollution play in its development. However, there is an increasingly popular theory that anxiety, depression, and stress also contribute to breast cancer. Traumatic life events can lead to depression, which in turn increases the risk of developing breast cancer. This is the central premise of Foiled Creative Fire by Heather Goodare.

I have had a nomadic life, working in some 24 countries for between two months and two decades or more. Movement is therefore the common theme of that life. For long periods I relied on my library of books to anchor a sense that a stable personal identity underpinned the variety. I was and am a professional intellectual, so the link was fairly obvious. But music was always my passion, even if it made few appearances in my public profile. My store of analogue musical objects was more vulnerable than the books in all those upheavals. In any case, the technology also moved on and many of them became obsolete. I was more or less reconciled to having lost my library of music except in my memory. But the digital revolution of the last three decades changed all that, especially the World Wide Web that enabled the present exercise of storage, retrieval and reflection. At very little cost I can now assemble my favourite music of a lifetime. This is the result.

COVID-19 and the consequential events of 2020 have propelled science into the public consciousness. Over the past year, as scientists around the world searched for COVID-19 treatments and a pandemic-halting vaccine, the study of public health, immunology, psychology, and many other areas of research have received increased levels of attention.