FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY ASSURANCE KEY DRIVERS OF COMPETITIVENESS

Under an institutional and organizational collapsed environment caused by Argentine cracked economical and political situation, farmers and producers are forced to add value through technological innovation designs in order to be competitive at the international market. Food safety and Quality Assurance systems appear as key drivers of competitiveness. Three emerging models are comparatively analyzed, evaluating real agribusiness that are developing HACCP, Quality & Origin Protocol and ISO 9001 Quality Management. As a result, the different level of success and impact of those agribusinesses immersed in the aforementioned external constraints and no less precarious internal limitations based on cultural, technological and financial limitations are uncertain and variable.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Analysis of Several Productive Development Policies in Uruguay

This paper reviews and assesses some of the Productive Development Policies currently being implemented in Uruguay. Three horizontal and three vertical policies are considered in light of the market and public failures they attempt to address and minimize. Horizontal policies comprise Innovation, Industrial Promotion and Directives for Industrial and Technological Development. Vertical policies include the analysis of Forestry Law, Meat Traceability and the Sustainable Production Project in the agricultural sector.Public economics, Regulation and industrial policy, Industrial policy

A prescriptive approach to qualify and quantify customer value for value-based requirements engineering

Recently, customer-based product development is becoming a popular paradigm. Customer expectations and needs can be identified and transformed into requirements for product design with the help of various methods and tools. However, in many cases, these models fail to focus on the perceived value that is crucial when customers make the decision of purchasing a product. In this paper, a prescriptive approach to support value-based requirements engineering (RE) is proposed, describing the foundations, procedures and initial applications in the context of RE for commercial aircraft. An integrated set of techniques, such as means-ends analysis, part-whole analysis and multi-attribute utility theory is introduced in order to understand customer values in depth and width. Technically, this enables identifying the implicit value, structuring logically collected statements of customer expectations and performing value modelling and simulation. Additionally, it helps to put in place a system to measure customer satisfaction that is derived from the proposed approach. The approach offers significant potential to develop effective value creation strategies for the development of new product

Engineering model transformations with transML

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10270-011-0211-2Model transformation is one of the pillars of model-driven engineering (MDE). The increasing complexity of systems and modelling languages has dramatically raised the complexity and size of model transformations as well. Even though many transformation languages and tools have been proposed in the last few years, most of them are directed to the implementation phase of transformation development. In this way, even though transformations should be built using sound engineering principles—just like any other kind of software—there is currently a lack of cohesive support for the other phases of the transformation development, like requirements, analysis, design and testing. In this paper, we propose a unified family of languages to cover the life cycle of transformation development enabling the engineering of transformations. Moreover, following an MDE approach, we provide tools to partially automate the progressive refinement of models between the different phases and the generation of code for several transformation implementation languages.This work has been sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation with project METEORIC (TIN2008-02081), and by the R&D program of the Community of Madrid with projects “e-Madrid" (S2009/TIC-1650). Parts of this work were done during the research stays of Esther and Juan at the University of York, with financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant refs. JC2009-00015, PR2009-0019 and PR2008-0185)

Synthesis report with pro-poor trade research findings and policy recommandations

The purpose of the project was to investigate international trade in fisheries products and its relationship to poverty alleviation and livelihoods of poor aquatic resource users in developing countries in Asia, and to identify options to improve the effectiveness of poverty reduction through international seafood trade. The project directly addressed the EC-PREP priority area of trade and development, and indirectly provided valuable insight to two other priority areas: food security and sustainable rural development; and institutional capacity building. [PDF contains 60 pages.

A Trust-by-Design Framework for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment where interconnected entities can interact and can be identifiable, usable, and controllable via the Internet. However, in order to interact among them, such IoT entities must trust each other. Trust is difficult to define because it concerns different aspects and is strongly dependent on the context. For this reason, a holistic approach allowing developers to consider and implement trust in the IoT is highly desirable. Nevertheless, trust is usually considered among different IoT entities only when they have to interact among them. In fact, without considering it during the whole System Developmente Life Cycle (SDLC) there is the possibility that security issues will be raised. In fact, without a clear conception of the possible threats during the development of the IoT entity, the lack of planning can be insufficient in order to protect the IoT entity. For this reason, we believe that it is fundamental to consider trust during the whole SDLC in order to carefully plan how an IoT entity will perform trust decisions and interact with the other IoT entities. To fulfill this goal, in this thesis work, we propose a trust-by-design framework for the IoT that is composed of a K-Model and several transversal activities. On the one hand, the K-Model covers the SDLC from the need phase to the utilization phase. On the other hand, the transversal activities will be implemented differently depending on the phases. A fundamental aspect that we implement in this framework is the relationship that trust has with other related domains such as security and privacy. Thus we will also consider such domains and their characteristics in order to develop a trusted IoT entity

Embedding object-oriented design in system engineering

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a collection of techniques intended to document design decisions about software. This contrasts with systems engineering approaches such as for exampleStatemate and the Yourdon Systems Method (YSM), in which the design of an entire system consisting of software and hardware can be documented. The difference between the system- and the software level is reflected in differences between execution semantics as well as in methodology. In this paper, I show how the UML can be used as a system-level design technique. I give a conceptual framework for engineering design that accommodates the system- as well as the software level and show how techniques from the UML and YSM can be classified within this framework, and how this allows a coherent use of these techniques in a system engineering approach. These ideas are illustrated by a case study in which software for a compact dynamic bus station is designed. Finally, I discuss the consequences of this approach for a semantics of UML constructs that would be appropriate for system-level design

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing: A Whitepaper

Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing refers to fishing activities that do not comply with regional, national, or international fisheries conservation or management measures. This whitepaper characterizes the status of Illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, the philanthropic community's current efforts to help reduce it, and potential opportunities for the Packard Foundation to become more actively engaged. The paper was drafted between March and June 2015, following a combination of desk research and a handful of select interviews