Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned

As the food and financial crises bring fresh urgency to concerns over hunger, food access, public health, labor and economic development -- citizens and governments are beginning to connect these issues back to the food system as a whole. Councils are springing up across North America to "connect the dots"1 between the growing number of neighborhood food initiatives and communities forging policies for just, healthy food systems. Food Policy Councils act as both forums for food issues and platforms for coordinated action. The first Food Policy Council started in 1982 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then Food Policy Councils have been established at state, local and regional levels across the county. Some have remarkable success stories. Others have failed, disbanded, or spun-off into other service and non-profit organizations.What lessons can be taken from North America's three-decade experiment in formulating local food policy? Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned is an assessment based on an extensive literature review and testimony from 48 individual interviews with the people most involved in Food Policy Councils

Fish or Cut Bait? Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway

“Our relations with Canada, happily always close, involve more and more the unbreakable ties of strategic interdependence. Both nations now need the St. Lawrence Seaway for security as well as for economic reasons. I urge the Congress promptly to approve our participation and construction.” When President Dwight D. Eisenhower included these sentences in his State of the Union Address in January of 1954, there must have been an almost audible sigh of relief from the thousands of Seaway activists, Congressmen, and lobbyists across the country. The previous year had not been an easy one for supporters of the St. Lawrence Seaway project, but now in 1954 they had the guaranteed support of the most powerful and popular man in the nation

Foreign Produced Content and Japanese Price Disinflation: An Empirical Study

This research investigates the role non-macroeconomic factors have played in subduing inflationary pressures in Japan. We investigate the hypothesis that the under-recognized presence of goods with high foreign produced content (FPC) in the consumer market basket has coincided with reduced price-level increases over the time period 1991-2004. An empirical examination and descriptive comparison of CPI market basket items and import data categories suggest the negative relationship between FPC and the CPI inflation rate over this time period is significant. Our conclusions suggest the extent to which measures of inflation are considered to be an accurate gauge of macroeconomic conditions or monetary policy effectiveness is overstated

Historical Evidence of Importance to the Industrialization of Flat-plate Silicon Photovoltaic Systems, Volume 2

Problems which may arise as the low cost silicon solar array (LSSA) project attempts to industrialize the production technologies are defined. The charge to insure an annual production capability of 500 MW peak for the photovoltaic supply industry by 1986 was critically examined, and focused on one of the motivations behind this goal-concern over the timely development of industrial capacity to supply anticipated demand. Conclusions from the analysis are utilized in a discussion of LSSA's industrialization plans, particularly the plans for pilot, demonstration and commercial scale production plants. Specific recommendations for the implementation of an industrialization task and the disposition of the project quantity goal were derived

The Determinants of Equity Risk and Their Forecasting Implications: A Quantile Regression Perspective

Several market and macro-level variables influence the evolution of equity risk in addition to the well-known volatility persistence. However, the impact of those covariates might change depending on the risk level, being different between low and high volatility states. By combining equity risk estimates, obtained from the Realized Range Volatility, corrected for microstructure noise and jumps, and quantile regression methods, we evaluate the forecasting implications of the equity risk determinants in different volatility states and, without distributional assumptions on the realized range innovations, we recover both the points and the conditional distribution forecasts. In addition, we analyse how the the relationships among the involved variables evolve over time, through a rolling window procedure. The results show evidence of the selected variables\u2019 relevant impacts and, particularly during periods of market stress, highlight heterogeneous effects across quantiles

A Sub-λ3\rm \lambda^{3}-Volume Cantilever-based Fabry-P\'erot Cavity

We report on the realization of an open plane-concave Fabry-P\'erot resonator with a mode volume below $\lambda^3$ at optical frequencies. We discuss some of the less common features of this new microcavity regime and show that the ultrasmall mode volume allows us to detect cavity resonance shifts induced by single nanoparticles even at quality factors as low as $100$. Being based on low-reflectivity micromirrors fabricated on a silicon cantilever, our experimental arrangement provides broadband operation, tunability of the cavity resonance, lateral scanning and promise for optomechanical studies

The Significance of Mongolia\u27s Foreign Policy and Security Apparatus on a Global and Regional Scale

Mongolia, land-locked between two politically, economically, and militarily powerful nations — Russia and China — often must balance its foreign and security policies with its two neighbors and countries beyond. When discussing Mongolia’s foreign policy and security apparatus, historians and scholars look at the international relations of East Asia as a whole. This is the case not because Mongolia’s foreign policy is insignificant but because greater powers impose greater influence on smaller states. Mongolia’s partial involvement in World War II (WWII), and the Cold War introduced new challenges as well as opportunities for Mongolia to modernize its foreign policy principles and security policies. In turn, this research paper offers ways to enhance and strengthen Mongolia’s foreign and security policies by carefully looking at historical turning points, addressing existing issues, and providing a solution-based analysis for policymakers. Moreover, while there is a burgeoning discussion on cybersecurity, as a non-traditional security threat, Mongolia’s cybersecurity apparatus is a new contribution to the existing literature. The research essay concludes that Mongolia’s foreign and security policies are effective, timely efficient in facing both the traditional and non-traditional threats. Keywords Mongolia, Foreign policy, security policy, cyber security, small states, diplomac

Changing foreign policy: the Obama Administration’s decision to oust Mubarak

This paper analyses the decision of the Obama administration to redirect its foreign policy towards Egypt in the wake of the Arab Spring. It attempts to highlight the issue of how governments deal with decision-making at times of crisis, and under which circumstances they take critical decisions that lead to major shifts in their foreign policy track record. It focuses on the process that led to a reassessment of US (United States) foreign policy, shifting from decades of support to the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, towards backing his ouster. Specifically, the paper attempts to assess to what extent the decision to withdraw US support from a longstanding state-leader and ally in the Middle East can be seen as a foreign policy change (FPC). A relevant research question this paper pursues is: how can the withdrawal of US support to a regime considered as an ally be considered, in itself, as a radical FPC