COMMISSION STAFF WORKING PAPER IMPACT ASSESSMENT Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020 ANNEX 8 {COM(2011) 625 final} {COM(2011) 626 final} {COM(2011) 627 final} {COM(2011) 628 final} {COM(2011) 629 final} {COM(2011) 630 final} {COM(2011) 631 final} {SEC(2011) 1154 final}. SEC (2011) 1153 final, 12.10.2011

En los últimos tempos la educación infantil ha adquirido especial relevancia en el marco de las políticas educacionales de los países latinoamericanos y en especial de Chile (CONTRERAS, HERRERA; LEYTON, 2007; DIEZ, 2011; DUSSAILLANT, 2009; TOKMAN, 2010). La investigación centra su atención en la calidad educativa y, en particular, en los procesos autoevaluativos que demuestran los niños de edades tempranas. Desde una perspectiva paradigmática cuantitativa, apoyada de reportes cualitativos, el estudio presenta la capacidad explicativa de las variables metacognición, autorregulación, autoeficacia, lenguaje y autoconcepto, respecto del desarrollo de la autoevaluación y su vinculación con mejores niveles de logros en párvulos de cinco a seis años. Los hallazgos muestran que la autoevaluación es una dimensión que muestra diversos niveles de expresión en el grupo investigado, fuertemente influenciada por las profesionales del área, tal como se aprecia en los discursos infantiles. Además, las variables analizadas presentan diferentes grados de contribución a la explicación de la autoevaluación en el grupo estudiado

Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: How the Food Sector is Managing Global Water Risks

The global food sector faces extraordinary risks from the twin challenges of water scarcity and water pollution. Growing competition for water, combined with weak regulations, failing infrastructure, pollution and climate change impacts threaten the sector's water security and contribute to a water availability emergency that was recently ranked the world's "top global risk" by the World Economic Forum.This report examines how water risks affect the profitability and competitive positioning of 37 major food sector companies in four industries: packaged food, beverage, meat and agricultural products. It evaluates and ranks these companies -- the majority of which are U.S. domiciled and publicly-traded -- on how well they are positioned to anticipate and mitigate these risks, as well as contribute to improved water resource management.The report provides recommendations for how analysts and investors can effectively evaluate food sector companies on their water risk exposure and management practices. It also provides recommendations for how food companies can improve water efficiency and water quality across their operations and supply chains to reduce risks and protect water resources

Food security, risk management and climate change

This report identifies major constraints to the adaptive capacity of food organisations operating in Australia. This report is about food security, climate change and risk management. Australia has enjoyed an unprecedented level of food security for more than half a century, but there are new uncertainties emerging and it would be unrealistic – if not complacent – to assume the same level of food security will persist simply because of recent history. The project collected data from more than 36 case study organisations (both foreign and local) operating in the Australian food-supply chain, and found that for many businesses,  risk management practices require substantial improvement to cope with and exploit the uncertainties that lie ahead. Three risks were identified as major constraints to adaptive capacity of food organisations operating in Australia:  risk management practices; an uncertain regulatory environment – itself a result of gaps in risk management; climate change uncertainty and projections about climate change impacts, also related to risk management

A system dynamics-based simulation study for managing clinical governance and pathways in a hospital

This paper examines the development of clinical pathways in a hospital in Australia based on empirical clinical data of patient episodes. A system dynamics (SD)-based decision support system (DSS) is developed and analyzed for this purpose. System dynamics was used as the simulation modeling tool because of its rigorous approach in capturing interrelationships among variables and in handling dynamic aspects of the system behavior in managing healthcare. The study highlights the scenarios that will help hospital administrators to redistribute caseloads amongst admitting clinicians with a focus on multiple Diagnostic Related Groups (DRG’s) as the means to improve the patient turnaround and hospital throughput without compromising quality patient care. DRG’s are the best known classification system used in a casemix funding model. The classification system groups inpatient stays into clinically meaningful categories of similar levels of complexity that consume similar amounts of resources. Policy explorations reveal various combinations of the dominant policies that hospital management can adopt. The analyses act as a scratch pad for the executives as they understand what can be feasibly achieved by the implementation of clinical pathways given a number of constraints. With the use of visual interfaces, executives can manipulate the DSS to test various scenarios. Experimental evidence based on focus groups demonstrated that the DSS can enhance group learning processes and improve decision making. The simulation model findings support recent studies of CP implementation on various DRG’s published in the medical literature. These studies showed substantial reductions in length of stay, costs and resource utilization