Mozambique's Food Security Success Story

Resultados das investigações do Projecto de Segurança Alimentar em Moçambique MAP-Direcção de Economía-Dpto. Estatísticafood security, food policy, Mozambique, Food Security and Poverty, Q18,

Designing Market-based Approaches to Short and Long-run Emergency Assistance in Africa

Resultados das investigações do Projecto de Segurança Alimentar em Moçambique MAP-Direcção de Economía-Dpto. Estatísticafood security, food policy, Mozambique, emergency assistance, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Security and Poverty, Q18,

Brown bullhead catfish (ameiurus nebulosus) in Lake Taupo

Brown bullhead catfish (Ameiurus nebulosus) were first discovered in Lake Taupo during the early 1980s and are believed to have originated from an illegal liberation into the southern end of the lake. A native of the southern and eastern states of America, these catfish have been in New Zealand since 1878 and are now widespread throughout the Waikato region. In 1995 the population structure, abundance, age, growth rate and diet of catfish in the littoral zone (150 mm FL) and small fish. Low numbers of catfish across all size classes were caught from exposed sandy sites. The diet of catfish was size and habitat dependent. Small catfish (<150 mm FL) fed predominantly on chironomids, Cladocera, gastropods, caddisfly larvae, plant material and detritus. Larger catfish were found to prey to a greater extent on koura (Paranephrops planifrons), fish and terrestrial invertebrates

Blackboard Blogging & beyond

This Share contains videos and links to help you get up to speed with blogging using Blackboard, Blackboard blogs are nice safe places to start blogging and although they don't look cool, there alright ! Then check out tumblr, wordpress or blogger to start blogging on your own in public

On Sharp Identification Regions for Regression Under Interval Data

The reliable analysis of interval data (coarsened data) is one of the most promising applications of imprecise probabilities in statistics. If one refrains from making untestable, and often materially unjustified, strong assumptions on the coarsening process, then the empirical distribution of the data is imprecise, and statistical models are, in Manski’s terms, partially identified. We first elaborate some subtle differences between two natural ways of handling interval data in the dependent variable of regression models, distinguishing between two different types of identification regions, called Sharp Marrow Region (SMR) and Sharp Collection Region (SCR) here. Focusing on the case of linear regression analysis, we then derive some fundamental geometrical properties of SMR and SCR, allowing a comparison of the regions and providing some guidelines for their canonical construction. Relying on the algebraic framework of adjunctions of two mappings between partially ordered sets, we characterize SMR as a right adjoint and as the monotone kernel of a criterion function based mapping, while SCR is indeed interpretable as the corresponding monotone hull. Finally we sketch some ideas on a compromise between SMR and SCR based on a set-domained loss function. This paper is an extended version of a shorter paper with the same title, that is conditionally accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Imprecise Probability: Theories and Applications. In the present paper we added proofs and the seventh chapter with a small Monte-Carlo-Illustration, that would have made the original paper too long

Storing carbon in soil. Can we slow a revolving door?

There is no doubt that soils are a vast store of carbon and partially control the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Maintaining soil organic matter is also crucial for production and environmental protection. Land-use change and management practices are central to maintaining soil carbon, because these can both increase and decrease soil carbon. Pasture systems can store large amounts of soil carbon and there may be an opportunity to store more in New Zealand dairy systems with multiple benefits. Active research is investigating approaches to achieve this goal through the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre