Governing spillovers of agricultural land use through voluntary sustainability standards: A coverage analysis of sustainability requirements

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are prominent governance instruments that define and verify sustainable agricultural land use at farm and supply chain levels. However, agricultural production can prompt spillover dynamics with implications for sustainability that go beyond these scales, e.g., through runoff of chemical inputs or long-distance migrant worker flows. Scientific evidence on the governance of spillovers through VSS is, however, limited. This study investigates the extent to which VSS regulate a set of 21 environmental and socio-economic spillovers of agricultural land use. To this end, we assessed the spillover coverage in 100 sustainability standards. We find that VSS have a clear tendency to cover environmental spillovers more extensively than socio-economic spillovers. Further, we show how spillover coverage differs across varying types of standard-setting organizations and VSS verification mechanisms. Finally, we discuss the role and limitations that VSS can have in addressing the revealed gaps

An ideal IoT solution for real-time web monitoring

For the internet of things (IoT) to fully emerge, it is necessary to design a suitable system architecture and specific protocols for this environment. The former to provide horizontal solutions, breaking away the current paradigm of silos solutions, and thus, allowing the creation of open and interoperable systems; while the latter will offer efficient and scalable communications. This paper presents the latest standards and ongoing efforts to develop specific protocols for IoT. Furthermore, this paper presents a new system, with the most recent standards for IoT. Its design, implementation and evaluation will be also described. The proposed system is based on the latest ETSI M2M specification (ETSI TC M2M in ETSI TS 103 093 V2.1.1.http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/103000_103099/103093/02.01.01_60/ts_103093v020101p.pdf, 2013b) and the MQTT protocol (IBM, Eurotech in MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification pp 1-42, http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/webservices/ws-mqtt/MQTT_V3.1_Protocol_Specific. pdf, 2010). With this solution it is possible to show how we can create new applications to run over it and the importance of designing specifically tailored for IoT communication protocols in order to support real-time applications.- This project was funded by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), by Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC) - COMPETE and by Fundacao para a Ciencia eTecnologia, on the Scope of projects: PEstC/EEI/UI0319/2015 and PEstC/EEI/UI0027/2015. This paper is a result of the project "SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037", supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme(NORTE2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (EFDR).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Affective responses to stretching exercises: Exploring the timing of assessments

Affective responses during exercise have been identified as a predictor of exercise adherence. However, research has been mostly limited to aerobic and resistance exercise. Considering that stretching activities are also an important component of physical fitness, this quasi-experimental study was designed to: 1) compare affective responses during and immediately after stretching exercises in apparently healthy adults, and 2) assess the consistency and repeatability of affect ratings obtained one week apart. For this purpose, we analyzed the Feeling Scale (FS) and Felt Arousal Scale (FAS) ratings using Time (during and after stretching) x Intensity (light, moderate, vigorous) x Stretched Muscle Group (quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, latissimus dorsi, triceps) with repeated measures analysis of variance (ANCOVA) in 34 participants (21 males; aged 32.8 ± 8.6 years). The repeatability of FS and FAS ratings was assessed using two-way random-effects models, Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots. FS scores were higher following the stretching exercises, whereas FAS scores were lower, particularly in the vigorous intensity. In general, the inter-day repeatability for FS and FAS measurements was good across muscle groups. ICC tended to be higher at vigorous intensities. Ratings of core affect can be collected during static passive stretches using the FAS and FAS in ecologically valid settings. These results suggest that an adequate assessment of core affective responses to stretching activities should be performed during the exercises.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Patente Europeia de Efeito Unitário – Impacto no Desenvolvimento Económico Europeu

Tese de mestrado, Regulação e Avaliação do Medicamento e Produtos de Saúde, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Farmácia, 2018O investimento na proteção de patentes tem em consideração múltiplos aspetos da realidade em que esta se insere e que influenciam o planeamento estratégico de modo a tornar certos países ou territórios, de maior interesse em termos de propriedade industrial. O mercado fragmentado de patentes e as diferenças significativas entre sistemas judiciais nacionais na União Europeia são prejudiciais para a inovação e comportam um grande peso na atividade das empresas que procurem proteção das suas invenções neste continente. Obter, aplicar e gerir patentes na União Europeia está longe de ser eficiente ou custo-efetivo. Estes motivos levam à necessidade da uniformização dos princípios jurídicos e procedimentos administrativos para unificar o mercado da Propriedade Industrial na União Europeia. É neste contexto de multiplicidade de fronteiras dentro da União Europeia que surge o tema central desta discussão: o Efeito Unitário. O Efeito Unitário da Patente Europeia, ou Patente Unitária, é um conceito em discussão há mais de quatro décadas e a sua implementação, a par da criação do Tribunal Unificado de Patentes da União Europeia, apresenta-se como uma solução ideal que usufrui de estruturas já existentes e processos conhecidos para sobre eles unificar a Patente Europeia a par do mercado e moeda únicos. Em suma, a via unitária deverá ser uma alternativa a ponderar pelo requerente, estrategicamente, juntamente com as tradicionais Patentes Nacionais e Europeia com validações nacionais, colmatando progressivamente uma lacuna grave na união da Europa como mercado aberto e único. O sistema terá um impacto tão relevante quanto o maior número de participantes envolvidos, quer de Estados Membro Contratantes que contribuem para a valorização do Tribunal Unificado de Patentes e da patente que tutela, como do número de requerentes que comprovará a qualidade, eficácia e eficiência do novo sistema para os restantes. A indústria farmacêutica está particularmente bem posicionada para ser pioneira no recurso ao Efeito Unitário da Patente Europeia, com produtos destinados a um mercado e estratégia globais, frequentemente associados a custos elevados de manutenção, complexidade na gestão dos seus direitos e custos judiciais de valores elevados, podendo representar uma redução de custos até agora incontornáveis na gestão de Propriedade Industrial.Investment in patent protection takes into consideration multiple aspects of the reality in which it is embedded and that may influence its strategic planning in order to make certain countries or territories of greater interest in terms of industrial property. The split patent market and the significant differences between national judicial systems in the European Union are harmful to innovation and put a heavy burden on the activity of companies seeking to protect their inventions on this continent. Obtaining, enforcing and managing patents in the European Union is far from efficient or cost-effective. These reasons lead to the need for the harmonization of legal principles and administrative procedures to unify Industrial Property markets in the European Union. It’s in this background of multiplicity of borders within the European Union that the core theme of this discussion arises: the Unitary Effect. The Unitary Effect of the European Patent, or Unitary Patent, is a concept under discussion for over four decades and its implementation, together with the creation of a Unified Patent Court for the European Union, presents itself as an ideal solution that benefits from existing structures and known processes to unify the European Patent over, alongside the current single market and currency. In short, the unitary route should be an alternative to be considered by the applicant in strategic terms, together with the traditional National and European Patent and national validations, progressively bridging a serious gap in the European unity as an open and single market. The system will have as relevant an impact as the greater number of participants are involved, either Contracting Member States that contribute to enhancing the value of the Unified Patent Court and the patent under its custody, and the number of applicants who will verify the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of the new system for all else. The pharmaceutical industry is particularly well placed to pioneer the use of the European Patent with Unitary Effect, with products destined for a global market and a geographically wide strategy usually associated with high maintenance costs, complex rights management and highly costly litigations, which may represent a cost reduction unavoidable up until now in Industrial Property management

System FωμF^\mu_\omega with Context-free Session Types

We study increasingly expressive type systems, from $F^\mu$ -- an extension of the polymorphic lambda calculus with equirecursive types -- to $F^{\mu;}_\omega$ -- the higher-order polymorphic lambda calculus with equirecursive types and context-free session types. Type equivalence is given by a standard bisimulation defined over a novel labelled transition system for types. Our system subsumes the contractive fragment of $F^\mu_\omega$ as studied in the literature. Decidability results for type equivalence of the various type languages are obtained from the translation of types into objects of an appropriate computational model: finite-state automata, simple grammars and deterministic pushdown automata. We show that type equivalence is decidable for a significant fragment of the type language. We further propose a message-passing, concurrent functional language equipped with the expressive type language and show that it enjoys preservation and absence of runtime errors for typable processes.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figure

Estimating Demand for Industrial and Commercial Land Use Given Economic Forecasts

Current developments in the field of land use modelling point towards greater level of spatial and thematic resolution and the possibility to model large geographical extents. Improvements are taking place as computational capabilities increase and socioeconomic and environmental data are produced with sufficient detail. Integrated approaches to land use modelling rely on the development of interfaces with specialized models from fields like economy, hydrology, and agriculture. Impact assessment of scenarios/policies at various geographical scales can particularly benefit from these advances. A comprehensive land use modelling framework includes necessarily both the estimation of the quantity and the spatial allocation of land uses within a given timeframe. In this paper, we seek to establish straightforward methods to estimate demand for industrial and commercial land uses that can be used in the context of land use modelling, in particular for applications at continental scale, where the unavailability of data is often a major constraint. We propose a set of approaches based on ‘land use intensity’ measures indicating the amount of economic output per existing areal unit of land use. A base model was designed to estimate land demand based on regional-specific land use intensities; in addition, variants accounting for sectorial differences in land use intensity were introduced.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

MagnetGrid : Model description and user guide

MagnetGrid is een modulair economisch landgebruiksmodel dat ruimtelijk expliciete biofysische informatie combineert met macro-economische projecties. MagnetGrid visualiseert toekomstige agrarisch landgebruikspatronen gedreven door een combinatie van klimatologische en socioeconomische ontwikkelingen. Het model kwantificeert de impact van deze trends en de mogelijke uitruil tussen verschillende doelstellingen. De ruimtelijk expliciete analyses van MagnetGrid kunnen voor een breed publiek toegankelijk gemaakt worden door kaarten die veranderingen in landgebruik laten zien op wereld-, regio-, land- en lokaal niveau

Medição da tensão de cedência em caldas hidráulicas com recurso a reometria rotacional

Cada vez mais, em Portugal, a consolidação de alvenarias de edifícios antigos e históricos é mais importante. A otimização de técnicas já existentes e o desenvolvimento de outras inovadoras é crucial para o sucesso das intervenções de conservação. A injeção de caldas como técnica de consolidação, é nos dias de hoje uma realidade, tendo como finalidade o aumento da compacidade, e a garantia da existência de ligações entre os diversos elementos que constituem uma parede de alvenaria, aumentando o cariz monolítico da parede. Sendo, por conseguinte, a injeção de caldas a técnica maioritariamente escolhida para a consolidação de alvenarias degradadas. A otimização da calda em termos de injectabilidade e fluidez garante a boa execução da intervenção de consolidação. Há fatores extrínsecos à calda que têm também um papel importante quanto à garantia das características reológicas da mesma, por exemplo a temperatura e a pressão de injeção. O trabalho em questão visa estudar a tensão de cedência, através da análise feita por meio de diferentes protocolos de medição com recurso à reometria rotacional. As caldas estudas são à base de cal hidráulica natural incorporam fibras de polipropileno e um superplastificante com o intuito de se variarem algumas caraterísticas da calda, como a tixotropia, e simultaneamente garantir trabalhabilidade suficiente durante os tempos de ensaio. A análise feita, está dividida em duas partes, ensaios no estado fresco, onde se afere as características reológicas e ensaios no estado endurecido, que explanam o comportamento mecânico após a hidratação da calda. Com os resultados que advém desta análise, consegue-se aferir qual o método mais eficaz para a medição das tensões de cedência e estudo da tixotropia. Através da utilização de um reómetro rotacional equipado com a geometria de pratos paralelos podem tirar-se as elações de qual dos procedimentos facultam mais informação acerca do comportamento reológico das caldas de injeção

Secure decentralized IoT Infrastructure

Despite many Internet of Things (IoT) Infrastructures having been implemented in recent years, none of them is truly prepared for a global deployment, where failure tolerance and scalability are an essential requirement. This article presents an alternative concept for IoT Infrastructures, which focuses on enhancing the traditional centralized architecture, usually operated by a single entity, into a decentralized architecture featuring multiple business roles. We propose a dynamic and self-configurable infrastructure on top of a structured Peer-to-Peer network. In addition, a set of communication protocols are provided in order to support heterogeneous devices, as well as data access, streaming and persistence. It is also an important focus of our proposal to have mechanisms that guarantee the privacy and security of the information flow and storage

Microbial deterioration of lamb meat of portuguese origin as affected by its intrinsic properties

In Portugal, sheep and goat meat production constitutes 2.8% of the total meat production, with a self-sufficiency of ~82%. The main autochthonous sheep breeds exploited for meat production are Churra-Galega-Bragançana (CGB) and Bordaleira-de-Entre-Douro-e-Minho (BEDM), whose quality must be optimised in order to ensure adequate income levels for sheep producers. The study aimed to characterise the evolution of spoilage microorganisms in refrigerated vacuum-packed (VP) lamb meat from BEDM and CGB breeds; and elucidate how intrinsic properties of meat can affect its microbial spoilage. Meat from BEDM breed presented higher (p<.0001) populations of mesophiles, lactic acid bacteria, Pseudomonas spp. and psychrotrophic bacteria, since its higher ultimate pH (means: 5.77 for BEDM vs. 5.58 for CGB) accelerated spoilage rate (p<.0001). While water activity and protein content were not found to modulate microbial deterioration (p>0.05), the growth of spoilage bacteria was found to be exacerbated by higher moisture (p<.0001) and higher ash content (p<0.001). By contrast, a higher fat content retarded (p<.0001) the growth of spoilage bacteria in VP lamb meat. In order to extend the shelf-life of Portuguese-origin lamb meat, animal handling must be enhanced to minimise pre-slaughter stress, and a carcass classification system should be adopted towards the selection of fatter animals and chilled carcasses of optimal ultimate pH.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio