Sugar policy and reform

Reviewing cross-country experience with sugar policies, and policy reform, the authors conclude that long-standing government interventions - rooted in historical trade arrangements, fear of shortages, and conflicting interests between growers, and sugar mills - often displace both the markets, and the institutions required to produce efficient outcomes. Arrangements rooted in colonial eras, still shape policies, and trade in the United States, the European Union (EU), and many developing countries. Once policies, and institutions are put in place, households, and the value of investments grow dependent on them, even as their usefulness fades. Firms and households make decisions that are costly to reverse. And the result is a legacy of path-dependent policies, in which approaches, and instruments are greatly influenced by past agreements, and previous interventions. The cumulative effects of these interventions are embodied in livelihoods, political institutions, capital stocks, and factor markets - which not only dictate the starting point for reform, but also determine which reform paths are feasible. Experiments with public ownership, common in many countries, have not succeeded. So most countries have initiated some measure of market reform. And events relating to NAFTA, Lome, and expansion of the EU, may bring about significant changes in the EU, and US sugar regimes, with cascading effects on other countries. Common problems in the sector include determining cane quality, finding methods for fairly sharing revenues from joint production, finding ways to take advantage of preferential trade arrangements with minimal negative consequences, finding ways to finance, and encourage research, and other activities with common benefits, identifying practices that facilitate equitable, sustainable privatization, and determining the relationship between sugar market reform, and markets in land, water, credit, and other inputs.Food&Beverage Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agribusiness,Agribusiness&Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agribusiness&Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Agribusiness,Agricultural Trade

Abolishing green rates : the effects on cereals, sugar, and oilseeds in West Germany

In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not yet been accomplished and has proven difficult to achieve. Creating a truly"common"agricultural policy in the European Community requires, at a minimum, eliminating price differences resulting from country- and commodity-specific exchange rates, known as"green rates."The authors discuss the various policy instruments that complicate the effects of these policy-determined price differences on crop production and the demand for inputs. They present a model that estimates the cross-commodity biases created by multiple policy instruments and that quantifies the effects of removing green-rate differentials in what was West Germany. The effects of price changes on domestic production are statistically significant in the model, although quantitatively small. This result suggests that eliminating green rates would lead primarily to a decline in farm income and a devaluation of fixed agricultural assets - which complicates the difficult task of attaining reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Crops&Crop Management Systems

Weaknesses and strenghts in assessing early childhood programmes: an assessment of an early childhood spanish trilingual priogramme in two- to three- year- old children

This article gives an account of the results from an assessment of an early childhood education programme, conducted over the course of two academic years (1999–2000 and 2000–2001), in a centre in northeastern Spain. The purpose of the assessment was to discover how a particular educational programme contributed to the short‐term competency levels of children aged from two to three years old. The programme’s curriculum encompassed different areas of development, including physical exercise and motor movement and social and linguistic development, using a unique teaching methodology that exposes the children to three different languages at the same time. The article includes a discussion of the weaknesses and strengths in implementing evaluation in early childhood education programmes, and concludes with some guiding principles that may prove useful in the evaluation of the appropriateness of any given assessment method used within an early childhood educational programme

La evaluación como garantía de calidad en educación preescolar

Este trabajo analiza la evaluación como el modo que tiene el educador de la etapa de preescolar de garantizar la calidad en sus intervenciones. Con este propósito, en primer lugar, en este artículo se analizan las razones por las que tiene sentido evaluar las intervenciones educativas en preescolar. En segundo lugar se enuncian los beneficios que parecen estar relacionados con la calidad de sus intervenciones y los beneficios que le reporta al niño un programa educativo de calidad

Espiritualitat i medicina

Parlar d'espiritualitat i medicina suposa tenir un cert concepte del que és 'medicina' (en això ens costaria poc posar-nos d'acord) i del que pugui ser 'espiritualitat' (això són figues d'un altre paner). Hi ha paraules difícils de definir i algunes potser convé no definir-les de manera massa estricta..

Agendas para disfrutarlas. Diez minutos por paciente en agendas flexibles

Nada más importante para la calidad de vida de un médico de fa milia que la gestión adecuada de la agenda de trabajo. Estamos en el paleolítico de una tecnología que va a aportarnos mucho. Desde el «cojan número, que el doctor ya les visitará», a nuestras agendas con cita previa hay un pequeño avance. Pero un avance que verdaderamente no ha contribuido a nuestra calidad de vida profesional, incluso me atrevería a decir más: ha empeorado en cier tos aspectos nuestra calidad de vida. Las razones son: - Las actuales agendas en gene ral conceden 5 minutos para visita de cita previa. Obviamente és ta no es la expectativa de un pa ciente que llama con antelación, o se persona en su centro de salud, para obtener visita con su doctor

Low temperature degradation behaviour of 10Ce-TZP/Al2O3 bioceramics obtained by microwave sintering technology

Zirconia is one of the most used ceramics, especially for biomedical applications, due to its exceptional mechanical properties. However, it is commonly known that its properties can be diminished owing to a low temperature degradation (LTD). This phenomenon consists on a spontaneous phase transformation, from tetragonal to monoclinic, under certain conditions, which is accelerated when the samples are exposed under high levels of humidity at a temperature range between 20-300 ºC. In addition to the fact that the monoclinic phase presents worse mechanical properties than the tetragonal one, there is a volume change of 4% between phases that gives rise to defects in the material as microcracks. Due to this reason, zirconia prostheses failed catastrophically inside the human body between 1999 and 2001 (1). Previous researches reveal that Al2O3 addition suppress the propagation of phase transformation (2). Thus, the aim of the present work is to study the hydrothermal ageing of zirconia doped with ceria and toughened with alumina (10Ce-TZP/Al2O3) composite, which has been sintered by microwave employing two different frequencies: 2.45 and 5.8 GHz. Microwave heating technology is based on the absorption of electromagnetic radiation by the material, which allows the sample to be heated. So far, most microwave heating equipments use 2.45 GHz; accordingly, the novelty of this study is to employ a frequency of 5.8 GHz and to investigate its effect on LTD. LTD is carried out in an autoclaved in steam at 120 ºC and 1.2 bar, because these conditions accelerate the hydrothermal aging process (3). In order to characterize the degraded samples, micro-Raman spectroscopy, AFM, nanoindentation technique and electronic microscopy have been performed. References 1. Norton, M. R., Yarlagadda, R., Anderson, G. H. J. Bone Joint Surg. Br., 2002, 84–B, 631–635. 2. Fabbri, P., Piconi, C., Burresi, E., Magnani, G., Mazzanti, F., Mingazzini, C. Dent. Mater., 2014. 3. Presenda, Á., Salvador, M. D., Moreno, R., Borrell, A. J. Am. Ceram. Soc., 2015, 98, 3680–3689

Implementació d'un Laboratori d'Habilitats Clíniques

Podeu consultar la Vuitena trobada de professorat de Ciències de la Salut completa a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/66524L’ensenyament en Ciències de la Salut complementa la formació teòrica amb la realització de pràctiques clíniques. Els nous plans d’estudis contemplen les competències i habilitats obligatòries a adquirir. El seu aprenentatge es complexa, intens i perllongat en el temps, integrant coneixements teòrics i habilitat en el maneig de les diferents tècniques. Els maniquins simuladors permeten l’ensenyament i entrenament sense estres per l’alumne i el professorat i sense riscos ple malalt. L’any 2005 es va crear al nostre Campus un Laboratori d’habilitats Clíniques (LHC)..

Effect of graphene and CNFs addition on the mechanical and electrical properties of dense alumina-toughened zirconia composites

Fully dense carbon/alumina-toughened zirconia composites were prepared by using a combination of aqueous colloidal powder processing and spark plasma sintering technique (SPS). Various carbon elements were introduced in alumina-toughened zirconia matrix (ZA) as filler; carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and graphene oxide (GO). The influence of the addition of different carbon forms on the microstructure and on the mechanical and electrical properties was investigated. In the case of the ZAGO composites, the SPS technique allowed, in one-step, the in situ reduction of the graphene oxide during the sintering process. The fracture toughness increases for ZAGO composites in comparison to the ZA material while the hardness decreases slightly with carbon elements addition. The electrical conductivity of the ZA composite drastically increased with the addition of graphene oxide, and it reached 10 Omega cm at 2 vol%. CrownA. Borrell acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for her Juan de la Cierva contract (JCI-2011-10498) and the Generalitat Valenciana by the financial support for the GV/2014/009 project. M.D. Salvador thanks to CAPES - Programa Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Brazil) for the concession of a PVE project No. A086/2013. A.S.A. Chinelatto thanks to CAPES for the concession of a post-doctoral fellowship in ICV-CSIC.Rincón, A.; Moreno, R.; Chinelatto, ASA.; Gutierrez, CF.; Salvador Moya, MD.; Borrell Tomás, MA. (2016). Effect of graphene and CNFs addition on the mechanical and electrical properties of dense alumina-toughened zirconia composites. Ceramics International. 42(1):1105-1113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2015.09.037S1105111342

Panels of eco-friendly materials for architectural acoustics

[EN] The objective of this work is to study the acoustic and mechanical properties of environmentally friendly materials manufactured through the process of resin infusion made from different types of fibres: some are biodegradable obtained from renewable resources and others from recycled textile waste. The materials studied are composed of fibres of jute, hemp, coconut, biaxial linen and textile waste. The modulus of elasticity and the airborne sound insulation are determined through dynamic and acoustic tests, respectively. The behaviour of these innovative materials is compared to some traditional materials commonly used in architectural acoustics. The acoustic study of these environmentally friendly materials is carried out considering them as light elements of a single layer for their application to insulation of walls. The results are compared to plasterboards, considered as the most commonly used light material in buildings for airborne sound insulation. In conclusion, these materials are a real and effective alternative to the traditional composites of synthetic matrices and reinforcements of glass fibres and there is a reduction in the production cost compared to the usual porous synthetic media that have expensive production processes.Fontoba-Ferrándiz, J.; Juliá Sanchis, E.; Crespo, J.; Segura Alcaraz, JG.; Gadea Borrell, JM.; Parres, F. (2020). Panels of eco-friendly materials for architectural acoustics. Journal of Composite Materials. 54(25):3743-3753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021998320918914S374337535425Yahya, M. N., Sambu, M., Latif, H. A., & Junaid, T. M. (2017). A study of Acoustics Performance on Natural Fibre Composite. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 226, 012013. doi:10.1088/1757-899x/226/1/012013Putra, A., Or, K. H., Selamat, M. Z., Nor, M. J. M., Hassan, M. H., & Prasetiyo, I. (2018). Sound absorption of extracted pineapple-leaf fibres. 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