Introduction and Overview

Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries explores the outstanding issues in global agricultural trade policy and evolving world production and trade patterns. This book presents research findings based on a series of commodity studies of significant economic importance to developing countries. Setting the stage with background chapters and investigations of cross-cutting issues, the authors describe trade and domestic policy regimes affecting agricultural and food markets and analyze product standards and compliance costs and their effects on agricultural and food trade. They then examine the impact and effectiveness of preferences and review the evidence on attempts to decouple agricultural support from agricultural output. Finally, they assess the potential gains from global liberalization in agricultural and food markets, and their sensitivity to various assumptions. Within this broad context of global agricultural policies and reforms, the authors then present detailed studies of commodity markets that feature distorted policy regimes among industrial and developing countries or that are important contributors to exports of developing countries. The commodities analyzed are sugar, dairy, rice, wheat, groundnuts, fruits and vegetables, cotton, seafood, and coffee. These commodity studies analyze current policy regimes in key producing and consuming countries, document the magnitude of these distortions, and estimate the distributional impacts-winners and losers-of trade and domestic policy reforms as well as their impact on trade flows and production location. Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries will aid policymakers and researchers in approaching global negotiations and in evaluating domestic policies on agriculture. This book compliments the findings of Agriculture and the WTO: Creating a Trading System for Development.

Extended Object Tracking: Introduction, Overview and Applications

This article provides an elaborate overview of current research in extended object tracking. We provide a clear definition of the extended object tracking problem and discuss its delimitation to other types of object tracking. Next, different aspects of extended object modelling are extensively discussed. Subsequently, we give a tutorial introduction to two basic and well used extended object tracking approaches - the random matrix approach and the Kalman filter-based approach for star-convex shapes. The next part treats the tracking of multiple extended objects and elaborates how the large number of feasible association hypotheses can be tackled using both Random Finite Set (RFS) and Non-RFS multi-object trackers. The article concludes with a summary of current applications, where four example applications involving camera, X-band radar, light detection and ranging (lidar), red-green-blue-depth (RGB-D) sensors are highlighted.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figure

Astrochemistry of dust, ice and gas: introduction and overview

A brief introduction and overview of the astrochemistry of dust, ice and gas and their interplay is presented, aimed at non-specialists. The importance of basic chemical physics studies of critical reactions is illustrated through a number of recent examples. Such studies have also triggered new insight into chemistry, illustrating how astronomy and chemistry can enhance each other. Much of the chemistry in star- and planet-forming regions is now thought to be driven by gas-grain chemistry rather than pure gas-phase chemistry, and a critical discussion of the state of such models is given. Recent developments in studies of diffuse clouds and PDRs, cold dense clouds, hot cores, protoplanetary disks and exoplanetary atmospheres are summarized, both for simple and more complex molecules, with links to papers presented in this volume. In spite of many lingering uncertainties, the future of astrochemistry is bright: new observational facilities promise major advances in our understanding of the journey of gas, ice and dust from clouds to planets.Comment: Introductory paper for Faraday Discussions 168 conference, April 201

Election Law and the Presidency: An Introduction and Overview

Americans now fully appreciate that presidential candidates are vying for a majority of the Electoral College votes, rather than the individual votes of constituents. Modern campaigns are organized around this goal, and commentators are focused on this reality. As a result, there has been an increased cry to reform the electoral process. After all, if every other public official in the land is elected by receiving more votes than their competitors, why should the President of the United States be elected in this apparently undemocratic fashion? The process appears even more unusual in that electors are chosen pursuant to state law rather than according to any standardized national rules. For example, Maine and Nebraska voters choose their electors by a combination of statewide and congressional district results, while the remaining forty-eight states and Washington, D.C., award their electors to the candidate who wins statewide. Further, all states award their electors to the candidate with a plurality of votes—irrespective of the margin of victory.8 However peculiar the American presidential election system appears, it is exactly how our Founders wanted it

Landscape Paradigms in Physics and Biology: Introduction and Overview

A brief introductory overview in general terms is given of concepts, issues and applications of the paradigm of rugged landscapes in the contexts of physics and biology.Comment: 10 pages, to be published in Physica

Introduction and Overview

Introduction and overview of the Sixth National Development Conference on Individual Events, June 19-20, 2020, hosted online by Illinois State University