Status and development in the dairy sector in the BRIC

Milk production is a very important element of the whole dairy chain. The BRIC countries are among the top 6 milk producing countries and produce nearly one third of the world's total milk volume. A large number of dairy animals and a relatively low milk output per animal show a great potential of the BRIC for a further growth of production. In the same time the BRIC countries comprise 42% of world's population. Expected population and prosperity growth will lead to a further growth in milk demand. The BRIC countries have a competitive level of milk production cost in international comparison. The success of the BRIC counties in the international milk market will depend on the contribution of all stakeholders in the dairy chain: farmers, processors, supporting industries and policy makers. --Dairy sector,BRIC,Brazil,Russia,India,China,IFCN

Measures of Gross National Happiness

Happiness is rising on the political agenda and this calls for measures of how well nations perform in creating great happiness for a great number, analogous to measures of success in creating wealth, such as GDP. Happiness is defined as subjective enjoyment of one’s life as-a-whole and this can be measured using self-reports. Question on happiness are currently used in large scale surveys of the general population in nations. As a result we have now comparable data on happiness in 95 contemporary nations and time-series of 25 years and longer on 11 developed nations. These data can be aggregated in different ways: If the aim is simply greater happiness for a greater number of citizens, Average happiness (AH) is an appropriate measure. If the focus is on enduring happiness, it is better to combine average happiness with longevity in an index of Happy Life Years (HLY). If the aim is to reduce disparity among citizens a relevant indicator is the Inequality of Happiness (IH) in the nations as measured with the standard deviation. Average and dispersion can also be combined in an index of Inequality-Adjusted Happiness (IAH). Comparison across nations shows sizable differences on all these measures of gross national happiness and these differences correspond with societal characteristics that can be influenced by policy makers, such as freedom and justice. Comparison over time shows major improvement during the last decade.utilitarianism, happiness, cross-national, progress

Economic Analysis of Global Climate Change Policy: A Primer

Global climate change, perhaps even more than other environmental problems , can be addressed successfully only with a solid understanding of its economic dimensions. This paper, prepared as an introduction to the economics section of a forthcoming book from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, provides a primer for non-economists on how economic analysis can be brought to bear on three broad questions: what will be the benefits of global climate policies; what will be their costs; and how can this information about alternative policies be assimilated in ways that are ultimately most useful for decision makers. Because of the magnitude of the anticipated benefits and costs of addressing the threat of global climate change, its great time horizons, massive uncertainties, and physical and economic irreversibilities, public policy in this area presents significant challenges to economic research. Nevertheless, a firm foundation is provided by the existing literature from nearly three decades of related theoretical and empirical economic analysis.Environment, Technology and Industry, Regulatory Reform, Other Topics

Standard operational procedure : video-monitoring of sessile benthic communities : a report to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

Information on changes in the abundance and distribution of organisms in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is essential for managers and scientists who wish to understand the ecological processes occurring on the reef and how these processes may be affected by human activities. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have jointly developed a strategy for the monitoring of long-term, regional changes in major biota and nutrients in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The program was established with two broadscale objectives: To detect and quantify major changes through time in the distribution and abundance of corals (and other dominant organisms), fishes, nutrients, and the crown-of-thorns starfish. 2 To provide managers (and other decision-makers) with information that is pertinent to assessing the 'health' of the Great Barrier Reef

Standing up for teaching: the 'crime' of striving for excellence

In recent years a proliferation of local and national teaching awards has occurred in many countries. The new language of excellence has led institutions and policy-makers to embrace teaching awards. Although these award schemes harbour competing and coexisting drivers and appeal to different stakeholders for different reasons, they have helped to raise the profile and importance of teaching in higher education. At the same time, the idea of recognising individuals as excellent teachers remains distasteful to many educators. Awards remain controversial as they compete with traditional ideals of egalitarianism which dominate the education profession. In the backdrop of lingering controversy, this short opinion paper reflects on the costs of standing up for teaching after applying for and successfully winning a National Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching. Using an acronym it describes the CRIME of excellence and makes the case for teaching awards criteria to recognise critical forms of scholarship. While definitions of excellence will always be contestable it argues that teaching awards are not mutually exclusive from an individual ethos of striving for continuous improvement. The paper concludes that the education profession does a great disservice to the status of teaching if we shame and snipe away at those judged by peers as our best

Collection and dissemination of data from environmental monitoring systems in estuaries

Environmental monitoring stations providing high frequency data over a multiyear time frame are not common in estuaries. These systems are designed to record extended timeseries at high frequency that are of great value for decision makers and the scientific community. However, the continuous acquisition of good quality data at estuaries is generally challenged by harsh environmental conditions. This contribution describes the main issues for continuous valid data (water quality and currents) acquisition in 2008-2014 with a monitoring station deployed at the Guadiana Estuary and how both near real-time and post-processed data were disseminated using web interfacesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Environmental Response Management Application

The Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC), a partnership between the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and NOAA\u27s Office of Response and Restoration (ORR), is leading an effort to develop a data platform capable of interfacing both static and real-time data sets accessible simultaneously to a command post and assets in the field with an open source internet mapping server. The Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA™) is designed to give responders and decision makers ready access to geographically specific data useful during spill planning/drills, incident response, damage assessment and site restoration. In addition to oil spill and chemical release response, this website can be relevant to other environmental incidents and natural disasters, responses and regional planning efforts. The platform is easy to operate, without the assistance of Information Technology or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists. It allows users to access individual data layer values, overlay relevant data sets, and zoom into segments of interest. The platform prototype is being developed specifically for Portsmouth Harbor and the Great Bay Estuary, NH. The prototype demonstrates the capabilities of an integrated data management platform and serves as the pilot for web-based GIS platforms in other regions

Long-term Employment and Job Security over the Last Twenty-Five Years: A Comparative Study of Japan and the U.S.

Taking advantage of a recent relaxation of Japanese government's data release policy, we conduct a cross-national analysis of micro data from Japan's Employment Status Survey and its U.S. counterpart, Current Population Survey. Our focus is to document and contrast changes in long-term employment and job security over the last twenty five years between the two largest advanced economies. We find that in spite of the prolonged economic stagnation, the ten-year job retention rates of core employees (employees of prime age of 30-44 who have already accumulated at least five years of tenure) in Japan were remarkably stable at around 70 percent over the last twenty-five years, and there is little evidence that Japan's Great Recession of the 1990s had a deleterious effect on job stability of such employees. In contrast, notwithstanding its longest economic expansion in history, the comparable job retention rates for core employees in the U.S. actually fell from over 50 percent to below 40 percent over the same time period. The probit estimates of job loss models in the two nations also point to the extraordinary resilience of job security of core employees in Japan, whereas showing a significant loss of job security for similar employees in the U.S. Though core employees in Japan turned out to have weathered their Great Recession well, we find that mid-career hires and young new job market entrants were less fortunate, with their employment stability deteriorating significantly. We interpret the findings, based on the theory of institutional complementarity, and derive lessons for policy makers around the world who are currently facing their own Great Recessions and developing effective policy responses.long-term employment, job security, Great Recession, Lost Decade, Japan and the U.S.

George Negus: news in media and society in the 21st century

The interview was commissioned by M/C Dialogue online journal as one in a series with "cultural scholars". George Negus as a veteran reporter, presenter and commentator in Australian television current affairs, was questioned about responses of the journalistic profession to changes dveeloping in media at the start of this Century. He adopts a position that practitioners must adjust to the "opportunities" of new media, convergence or globalisation. In response to proliferation of media producers and outlets, he advocates a continuing role for professional journalists as centrally placed sense-makers. He says: "I hink what the information age will do is make analytical and opinion journalism even more important than it always has been, because the information being available to you, you’ll probably still require assistance in sifting it, assessing it, evaluating it … I think the great paradox will be that as information journalism becomes less important, because the information will be so freely available to any one of these gatekeepers, self styled journalists, the opinion journalism, and commentary and analysis will become more important – because most people don’t have time to do that; they’re too busy doing other things.