Livestock trade networks for guiding animal health surveillance

BACKGROUND: Trade in live animals can contribute to the introduction of exotic diseases, the maintenance and spread endemic diseases. Annually millions of animals are moved across Europe for the purposes of breeding, fattening and slaughter. Data on the number of animals moved were obtained from the Directorate General Sanco (DG Sanco) for 2011. These were converted to livestock units to enable direct comparison across species and their movements were mapped, used to calculate the indegrees and outdegrees of 27 European countries and the density and transitivity of movements within Europe. This provided the opportunity to discuss surveillance of European livestock movement taking into account stopping points en-route. RESULTS: High density and transitivity of movement for registered equines, breeding and fattening cattle, breeding poultry and pigs for breeding, fattening and slaughter indicates that hazards have the potential to spread quickly within these populations. This is of concern to highly connected countries particularly those where imported animals constitute a large proportion of their national livestock populations, and have a high indegree. The transport of poultry (older than 72 hours) and unweaned animals would require more rest breaks than the movement of weaned animals, which may provide more opportunities for disease transmission. Transitivity is greatest for animals transported for breeding purposes with cattle, pigs and poultry having values of over 50%. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrated that some species (pigs and poultry) are traded much more frequently and at a larger scale than species such as goats. Some countries are more vulnerable than others due to importing animals from many countries, having imported animals requiring rest-breaks and importing large proportions of their national herd or flock. Such knowledge about the vulnerability of different livestock systems related to trade movements can be used to inform the design of animal health surveillance systems to facilitate the trade in animals between European member states. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0354-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Digital Content Contracts for Consumers

The application of consumer law to digital content contracts encounters a number of obstacles. Some of these are rather typical for digital content markets, e.g., the legal consequences of the classification of digital content as “goods” or “services”, and more importantly, the absence of general benchmarks to evaluate the conformity of digital content. Other problems, such as the limited usefulness of consumer information and the position of underage consumers, are not as such reserved to digital consumers, but they are amplified in the digital content markets. Moreover, particular attention is paid to the complex relationship between copyright law and consumer law. This paper explores the extent to which consumer (contract) law is fit to address the problems faced by digital consumers wishing to enjoy the benefits of digital content and examines whether the on-going initiatives at national and European level are likely to provide relief. Finally, recommendations for improvement are put forward in cases where the analysis shows that the problems identified are not or are insufficiently solved by these initiatives

Lead-free piezoceramics - Where to move on?

Lead-free piezoceramics aiming at replacing the market-dominant lead-based ones have been extensively searched for more than a decade worldwide. Some noteworthy outcomes such as the advent of commercial products for certain applications have been reported, but the goal, i.e., the invention of a lead-free piezocermic, the performance of which is equivalent or even superior to that of PZT-based piezoceramics, does not seem to be fulfilled yet. Nevertheless, the academic effort already seems to be culminated, waiting for a guideline to a future research direction. We believe that a driving force for a restoration of this research field needs to be found elsewhere, for example, intimate collaborations with related industries. For this to be effectively realized, it would be helpful for academic side to understand the interests and demands of the industry side as well as to provide the industry with new scientific insights that would eventually lead to new applications. Therefore, this review covers some of the issues that are to be studied further and deeper, so-to-speak, lessons from the history of piezoceramics, and some technical issues that could be useful in better understanding the industry demands. As well, the efforts made in the industry side will be briefly introduced for the academic people to catch up with the recent trends and to be guided for setting up their future research direction effectively.ope

Nanotechnology, governance, and public deliberation: What role for the Social Sciences?

In this article we argue that nanotechnology represents an extraordinary opportunity to build in a robust role for the social sciences in a technology that remains at an early, and hence undetermined, stage of development. We examine policy dynamics in both the United States and United Kingdom aimed at both opening up, and closing down, the role of the social sciences in nanotechnologies. We then set out a prospective agenda for the social sciences and its potential in the future shaping of nanotechnology research and innovation processes. The emergent, undetermined nature of nanotechnologies calls for an open, experimental, and interdisciplinary model of social science research

EU cohesion policy and micro-finance

In the chapter 2, the reader is given insight into the main features of Cohesion Policy, EU Structural funds and the financial engineering instruments: regulatory framework and operational features under the 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 programming periods. The chapter explain advantages as well as the disadvantages in using financial instruments and the new EU regulatory framework (Horizon 2014-2020); the aims and differences with respect to the previous regulatory framework are also highlighted. Then it examines Credit access and Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) seeking to trace a future path for microcredit instruments in Horizon 2014-2020

Application of failure mode and effect analysis and cause and effect analysis and Pareto diagram in conjunction with HACCP to a chocolate-producing industry: A case study of tentative GMO detection at pilot plant scale

Although the application of hazard analysis critical control point in the food industry dates back to the 1970s, a more quantitative and reliable approach towards risk assessment became feasible through application of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) model. A tentative approach of FMEA application to a filled chocolate-producing industry was attempted in an effort to exclude the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the final product. This is of crucial importance both from the moral (ethics) and the legislation (EC 1829/2003; EC 1830/2003; EC 18/2001) point of view. Two structured methods (preliminary hazard analysis and fault tree analysis) were used to analyse and predict the occurring failure modes in food chain system, based on the functions, characteristics and/or interactions of the ingredients or the processes, upon which the system depends. Cause and effect diagram (also known as Ishikawa, tree diagram and fishbone diagram) and Pareto diagram emerged as two very useful and effective tools towards optimising the GMO detection potential of FMEA