Agricultural Incomes Development in EU till 2030: Scenario Analysis of Main Driving Factors

Europe’s rural areas are expected to witness rapid changes due to developments in demography, (agricultural) policies, global trade, climate change, technology and enlargement of the European Union. These changes will affect farmers’ production and income level and make the final outcome of this process uncertain. This paper tries to assess this uncertainty by analyzing the results of 34 scenarios of the EURURALIS project. The scenario outcomes were used to investigate agricultural income development and to analyze the impact of different combinations of macroeconomic and policy factors on agricultural income. The results of these scenarios were achieved in a modeling framework consisting of a modified version of the Global Trade Analysis Project model (GTAP) and the more ecological-environmental oriented Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE).Agricultural incomes and production, agricultural policy, long-term scenarios,

Impact of the EU Biofuels Directive on the EU food supply chain

The paper investigates the impact of the EU Biofuels Directive (BFD) on the EU agri-food supply chain using the computable general equilibrium model of the world economy named LEITAP. LEITAP is an extended version of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model including an improved land market modeling, substitution possibilities between capital and energy as well as between different energy sources including biofuels, feed byproducts of the biofuel production process and substitution between different feed components and feed byproducts. The simulation results shows that the implementation of the EU BFD has a pronounced impact on the markets of cereals, oilseeds and sugar and shows only a limited impact on production and consumption of other agrifood commodities which are not directly affected by biofuel production. The harvested area and production of biofuel crops (grains, oilseeds) is expected to increase by 17% and 25% respectively and sugar production by 12% as a direct result the BFD. The EU-imports of these commodities are expected to rise more than twice. The increasing demand for biofuel crops and sugar will lift domestic prices of these commodities by 25% and 19% respectively but overall agri-food price inflation will be limited to 3% in the EU and to less than 1% at world market level.EU Biofuels Directive, food supply chain, indirect land use changes, computable general equilibrium model., Agricultural and Food Policy,

Modelling the Consequences of Increasing Bioenergy Demand on Land and Feed Use

Bioenergy Production, CGE modeling, Land Demand, Feed Demand, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

Impact of EU Biofuel Policies on World Agricultural and Food Markets

This paper assesses the global and sectoral implications of the EU biofuels directive in a multi-region computable general equilibrium framework. Our results show that without mandatory blending or subsidies to stimulate the use of biofuel crops in the petroleum sector the targets of the EU Biofuel directive will not the reached in 2010. With mandatory blending the enhanced demand for biofuel crops has a strong impact on agriculture at the global and European level. The additional demand from the energy sector might slow down or reverse the long term process of declining agricultural prices.Biofuels, EU biofuel directive, agricultural markets, Computable General Equilibrium modeling, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Cross validation of bi-modal health-related stress assessment

This study explores the feasibility of objective and ubiquitous stress assessment. 25 post-traumatic stress disorder patients participated in a controlled storytelling (ST) study and an ecologically valid reliving (RL) study. The two studies were meant to represent an early and a late therapy session, and each consisted of a "happy" and a "stress triggering" part. Two instruments were chosen to assess the stress level of the patients at various point in time during therapy: (i) speech, used as an objective and ubiquitous stress indicator and (ii) the subjective unit of distress (SUD), a clinically validated Likert scale. In total, 13 statistical parameters were derived from each of five speech features: amplitude, zero-crossings, power, high-frequency power, and pitch. To model the emotional state of the patients, 28 parameters were selected from this set by means of a linear regression model and, subsequently, compressed into 11 principal components. The SUD and speech model were cross-validated, using 3 machine learning algorithms. Between 90% (2 SUD levels) and 39% (10 SUD levels) correct classification was achieved. The two sessions could be discriminated in 89% (for ST) and 77% (for RL) of the cases. This report fills a gap between laboratory and clinical studies, and its results emphasize the usefulness of Computer Aided Diagnostics (CAD) for mental health care

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker's voice, regardless of an individual's culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances ("nonsense speech") produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language ("in-group advantage"). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables

Wintertime phytoplankton bloom in the subarctic Pacific supported by continental margin iron

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 20 (2006): GB1006, doi:10.1029/2005GB002557.Heightened biological activity was observed in February 1996 in the high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) subarctic North Pacific Ocean, a region that is thought to be iron-limited. Here we provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that Ocean Station Papa (OSP) in the subarctic Pacific received a lateral supply of particulate iron from the continental margin off the Aleutian Islands in the winter, coincident with the observed biological bloom. Synchrotron X-ray analysis was used to describe the physical form, chemistry, and depth distributions of iron in size fractionated particulate matter samples. The analysis reveals that discrete micron-sized iron-rich hot spots are ubiquitous in the upper 200 m at OSP, more than 900 km from the closest coast. The specifics of the chemistry and depth profiles of the Fe hot spots trace them to the continental margins. We thus hypothesize that iron hot spots are a marker for the delivery of iron from the continental margin. We confirm the delivery of continental margin iron to the open ocean using an ocean general circulation model with an iron-like tracer source at the continental margin. We suggest that iron from the continental margin stimulated a wintertime phytoplankton bloom, partially relieving the HNLC condition.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (KP1202030) to J. K. B and by NSFATM-9987457 to I. F. The Advanced Light Source is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences of the U.S. Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under contract DE-AC03-76SF00098

Phosphorylated DegU Manipulates Cell Fate Differentiation in the <i>Bacillus subtilis</i> Biofilm<em/>

Cell differentiation is ubiquitous and facilitates division of labor and development. Bacteria are capable of multicellular behaviors that benefit the bacterial community as a whole. A striking example of bacterial differentiation occurs throughout the formation of a biofilm. During Bacillus subtilis biofilm formation, a subpopulation of cells differentiates into a specialized population that synthesizes the exopolysaccharide and the TasA amyloid components of the extracellular matrix. The differentiation process is indirectly controlled by the transcription factor Spo0A that facilitates transcription of the eps and tapA (tasA) operons. DegU is a transcription factor involved in regulating biofilm formation. Here, using a combination of genetics and live single-cell cytological techniques, we define the mechanism of biofilm inhibition at high levels of phosphorylated DegU (DegU∼P) by showing that transcription from the eps and tapA promoter regions is inhibited. Data demonstrating that this is not a direct regulatory event are presented. We demonstrate that DegU∼P controls the frequency with which cells activate transcription from the operons needed for matrix biosynthesis in favor of an off state. Subsequent experimental analysis led us to conclude that DegU∼P functions to increase the level of Spo0A∼P, driving cell fate differentiation toward the terminal developmental process of sporulation

People Interpret Robotic Non-linguistic Utterances Categorically

We present results of an experiment probing whether adults exhibit categorical perception when affectively rating robot-like sounds (Non-linguistic Utterances). The experimental design followed the traditional methodology from the psychology domain for measuring categorical perception: stimulus continua for robot sounds were presented to subjects, who were asked to complete a discrimination and an identification task. In the former subjects were asked to rate whether stimulus pairs were affectively different, while in the latter they were asked to rate single stimuli affectively. The experiment confirms that Non-linguistic Utterances can convey affect and that they are drawn towards prototypical emotions, confirming that people show categorical perception at a level of inferred affective meaning when hearing robot-like sounds. We speculate on how these insights can be used to automatically design and generate affect-laden robot-like utterances