Life Cycle Assessment across the Food Supply Chain

The environmental impact is one of the major pillars of concerns when addressing the sustainability of food production and sustainable food consumption strategies. To assess to what extent food production affects the environment, one needs to choose a proper environmental assessment tool. Different types of assessment tools have been developed to establish environmental indicators, which can be used to determine the environmental impact of livestock production systems or agricultural products. The environmen¬tal assessment tools can be divided into the area based or product based (Halberg et al., 2005). Area-based indicators are, for example, nitrate leached per hectare from a pig farm, and product-based indicators are, for example, global warming potential per kg pork (Dalgaard, 2007). The area-based indicators are useful for evaluating farm emissions of nutrients such as nitrate that has an effect on the local environment. On the other hand, when considering the greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural production, the product-based indicators are useful for evaluating the impact of food productions on the global environment (e. g., climate change) and have the advantage that in addition to emis-sions from the farms, emissions related to the production of input s (e.g., soybean and artificial fertilizer) and outputs (e.g., slurry exported to other farms) are also included. In that way it is easier to avoid pollution swapping, which means that the solving of one pollution problem creates a new (Dalgaard, 2007)

Epidemiology and integrated control of Potato Late Blight in Europe

Phytophthora infestans, the causal agent of late blight, is a major threat to potato production in northwestern Europe. Before 1980, the worldwide population of P. infestans outside Mexico appeared to be asexual and to consist of a single clonal lineage of A1 mating type characterized by a single genotype. It is widely believed that new strains migrated into Europe in 1976 and that this led to subsequent population changes including the introduction of the A2 mating type. The population characteristics of recently collected isolates in NW Europe show a diverse population including both mating types, sexual reproduction and oospores, although differences are observed between regions. Although it is difficult to find direct evidence that new strains are more aggressive, there are several indications from experiments and field epidemics that the aggressiveness of P. infestans has increased in the past 20 years. The relative importance of the different primary inoculum sources and specific measures for reducing their role, such as covering dumps with plastic and preventing seed tubers from becoming infected, is described for the different regions. In NW Europe, varieties with greater resistance tend not to be grown on a large scale. From the grower’s perspective, the savings in fungicide input that can be achieved with these varieties are not compensated by the higher (perceived) risk of blight. Fungicides play a crucial role in the integrated control of late blight. The spray strategies in NW Europe and a table of the specific attributes of the most important fungicides in Europe are presented. The development and use of decision support systems (DSSs) in NW Europe are described. In The Netherlands, it is estimated that almost 40% of potato growers use recommendations based on commercially available DSS. In the Nordic countries, a new DSS concept with a fixed 7-day spray interval and a variable dose rate is being tested. In the UK, commercially available DSSs are used for c. 8% of the area. The validity of Smith Periods for the new population of P. infestans in the UK is currently being evaluated

Beyond time-homogeneity for continuous-time multistate Markov models

Multistate Markov models are a canonical parametric approach for data modeling of observed or latent stochastic processes supported on a finite state space. Continuous-time Markov processes describe data that are observed irregularly over time, as is often the case in longitudinal medical and biological data sets, for example. Assuming that a continuous-time Markov process is time-homogeneous, a closed-form likelihood function can be derived from the Kolmogorov forward equations -- a system of differential equations with a well-known matrix-exponential solution. Unfortunately, however, the forward equations do not admit an analytical solution for continuous-time, time-inhomogeneous Markov processes, and so researchers and practitioners often make the simplifying assumption that the process is piecewise time-homogeneous. In this paper, we provide intuitions and illustrations of the potential biases for parameter estimation that may ensue in the more realistic scenario that the piecewise-homogeneous assumption is violated, and we advocate for a solution for likelihood computation in a truly time-inhomogeneous fashion. Particular focus is afforded to the context of multistate Markov models that allow for state label misclassifications, which applies more broadly to hidden Markov models (HMMs), and Bayesian computations bypass the necessity for computationally demanding numerical gradient approximations for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs)

Sow body condition at weaning and reproduction performance in organic piglet production

The objective was to investigate the variation in backfat at weaning and its relations to reproduction results in organic sow herds in Denmark. The study included eight herds and 573 sows. The average backfat at weaning mean�13 mm; SD�4.2 mm) ranging from 10.5 to 17.3 mm among herds shows that it is possible to avoid poor body condition at weaning even with a lactation length of seven weeks or more. No main effect of backfat at weaning on reproduction performance was found, but the probability of a successful reproduction after weaning tended to decrease with decreasing backfat for first parity sows, whereas the opposite was the case for multiparous sows

As a Matter of Factions: The Budgetary Implications of Shifting Factional Control in Japan’s LDP

For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of agenda-setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions “control” the LDP affect the party’s decisions over spending priorities systematically. This runs contrary to the received wisdom in the voluminous literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison d’être, do not exhibit different policy preferences. We find that strong correlations do exist between which factions comprise the agenda-setting party “mainstream” and how the government allocates spending across pork-barrel and public goods items

Negative Effect of Smoking on the Performance of the QuantiFERON TB Gold in Tube Test.

False negative and indeterminate Interferon Gamma Release Assay (IGRA) results are a well documented problem. Cigarette smoking is known to increase the risk of tuberculosis (TB) and to impair Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) responses to antigenic challenge, but the impact of smoking on IGRA performance is not known. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of smoking on IGRA performance in TB patients in a low and high TB prevalence setting respectively. Patients with confirmed TB from Denmark (DK, n = 34; 20 smokers) and Tanzania (TZ, n = 172; 23 smokers) were tested with the QuantiFERON-TB Gold In tube (QFT). Median IFN-γ level in smokers and non smokers were compared and smoking was analysed as a risk factor for false negative and indeterminate QFT results. Smokers from both DK and TZ had lower IFN-γ antigen responses (median 0.9 vs. 4.2 IU/ml, p = 0.04 and 0.4 vs. 1.6, p < 0.01), less positive (50 vs. 86%, p = 0.03 and 48 vs. 75%, p < 0.01) and more false negative (45 vs. 0%, p < 0.01 and 26 vs. 11%, p = 0.04) QFT results. In Tanzanian patients, logistic regression analysis adjusted for sex, age, HIV and alcohol consumption showed an association of smoking with false negative (OR 17.1, CI: 3.0-99.1, p < 0.01) and indeterminate QFT results (OR 5.1, CI: 1.2-21.3, p = 0.02). Cigarette smoking was associated with false negative and indeterminate IGRA results in both a high and a low TB endemic setting independent of HIV status

Bæredygtighedsvurdering af stribedyrkning som biodiversitetstiltag i økologisk planteavl

Rapporten belyser og vurderer det fremtidige potentiale for stribedyrkning og dyrkningssystemets bæredygtighed under danske forhold. Det sker ud fra resultater og erfaringer fra Organic RDD 6-projektet StripCrop, som gennemføres i perioden 2021 – 2024 på forskningsplatforme og hos økologiske land-mænd i et samarbejde mellem Innovationscenter for Økologisk Landbrug, Aarhus Universitet, Københavns Universitet, Nordic Beet Research (NBR) og Agrointelli/BenFarm. I rapporten er der fokus på både funktionel biodiversitet, agronomiske aspekter samt praktiske erfaringer i forbindelse med brugen af landbrugsmaskiner og autonome robotter, og stribedyrkningssystemets fordele og udfordringer. Projektets resultater sammenlignes med forskning fra sammenlignelige klimazoner

A 24-Week, Randomized, Treat-to-Target Trial Comparing Initiation of Insulin Glargine Once-Daily With Insulin Detemir Twice-Daily in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Inadequately Controlled on Oral Glucose-Lowering Drugs

OBJECTIVE - To determine whether glargine is noninferior to detemir regarding the percentage of patients reaching A1C <7% without symptomatic hypoglycemia <= 3.1 mmol/l. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS - In this 24-week trial, 973 insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients on stable oral glucose-lowering drugs with A1CS. 7.0-10.5% were randomized to glargine once daily or detemir twice daily. Insulin doses were systematically titrated. RESULTS - 27.5 and 25.6% of patients reached the primary outcome with glargine and detemir, respectively, demonstrating the noninferiority of glargine. Improvements in A1C were -1.46 +/- 1.09% for glargine and -1.54 +/- 1.11% for detemir (P = 0.149), with similar proportions of patients achieving A1C <7% (P = 0.254) but more detemir-treated patients reaching A1C <6.5% (P = 0.017). Hypoglycemia risk was similar. Weight gain was higher for glargine (difference: 0.77 kg, P <0.001). Glargine doses were lower than detemir doses: 43.5 +/- 129.0 vs. 76.5 +/- 50.5 units/day (P <0.001). CONCLUSIONS - In insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients, glargine reached similar control as detemir, with more weight gain, but required significantly lower dose