Comment – defence lawyers in serious fraud trials

A comment by Neil Gerrard and Rinita Sarker of Dibb Lupton Alsop solicitors in response to the article by Ros Wright, Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) published in Amicus Curiae, Issue 12, page 12. The authors suggest that the attack by Ros Wright on the tactics adopted by defence lawyers in serious fraud trials is both unjustified and misleading. Published in the Comment section of Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Production costs across the EU in 2006

We have recently been involved in an EU project which is looking at farm accountancy cost estimation, the FACEPA (Farm Accountancy Cost Estimation and Policy Analysis of European Agriculture) project. Our part of this project was a relatively small section but very interesting as it involved looking at costs of production for a variety of organic products across several EU countries. The main products considered were milk, wheat and potatoes and the countries were UK, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, France, Italy, and Netherlands. The data were obtained for the year 2006 and all currencies were converted to Euros for ease of comparison. The main lessons learnt from this project (and found by previous authors prior to this) were that there is great variation between countries both in terms of costs and in terms of data collection

Traffic Demand Management In Three Historic Cities: Results Of A Multivariate Analysis of Business Attitudes.

The problem of traffic congestion and pollution in cities has become a major focus of UK transport policy in recent years. The government consultation paper, Breaking the Logjam (DETR, 1998), considered two specific traffic demand management policies: road user charges (RUC) and workplace parking levies (WPL). Legislation is now before Parliament to allow local authorities to introduce these policies. A major issue affecting the introduction of traffic demand management policies is the possible economic impacts on the urban business sector. There has been little research on the link between transport factors and urban business performance. There is general evidence that firms located in conurbations tend to perform more poorly than firms located in other areas (see, for example, Moore et al., 1980; Fothergill and Gudgin, 1982; Fothergill et al., 1984). There is also evidence that inner city firms perform more poorly than those in outer city locations. For example, Dobson and Gerrard (1991) find that engineering firms located in the inner Leeds area tend to have a lower level of profitability than engineering firms located in the outer Leeds area. Transport problems are one possible important cause of these location effects on business performance. This is supported directly by evidence that transport factors are an important influence on commercial location decisions (Nelson et al., 1994). Of all of the possible business reactions to the introduction of traffic demand management policies in urban areas, the potentially most important in economic terms is the relocation of businesses out of the urban core. Any significant degree of business evacuation of the urban core would have a profound impact on the ability of the urban economy to support the local population. In addition, any spatial restructuring of the local economy would have implications for traffic flows, shifting the locations of major traffic attractors from the urban core to the periphery. Although this may alleviate congestion in the urban core, it may serve only to create congestion elsewhere rendering traffic demand management policies somewhat counter-productive in the long run. The objective of this paper is to report the results of a multivariate analysis of business perceptions of current transport conditions and attitudes to traffic demand management policies based on a survey of firms in three historic cities - Cambridge, Norwich and York. A key component of the survey is the information provided on whether firms are currently considering relocation and the likely impact of the introduction of RUC and WPL on the next location decision. Basic data analysis of the survey responses indicates that the overwhelming majority of firms would definitely or possibly consider relocation as a response to the introduction of traffic demand management. The multivariate analysis seeks to identify those factors that have a statistically significant effect on the probability of relocation as a response. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly outlines the methodology of the multivariate analysis. Section 3 provides details of the data set used for the multivariate analysis. Section 4 presents the results of the multivariate analysis of the factors influencing the perception of acute transport problems, current relocation considerations, and relocation as a response to RUC and WPL. The final section provides a summary of the findings and a discussion of the policy implications

Inventory of data collecting and publishing institutions(= Deliverable 2.1 of the OrganicDataNetwork project: Report on data collectors)

Despite the continuous growth of the organic market in Europe, in most countries only very basic statistics about this sector exist. Individual country governments collect data which are published nationally and by EUROSTAT (the statistical office of the European Union), on the number of certified organic holdings, organic and in-conversion land areas and livestock numbers. Important market statistics, however, such as the amount of production, consumption, retail sales, international trade and prices at the farm or consumer level are lacking in most European countries. To understand the availability of data on the organic market and to assist in improving data quality and availability, it is first necessary to be aware of the organisations that currently collect, analyse and/or disseminate such data across Europe and the methods that they use. To assess the current status of organic market data collection in the EU and its neighbours, an online survey was developed and nearly 600 organisations within the EU27, EFTA, the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean were invited to participate. The useable response rate was 28% once very incomplete responses had been removed from the sample. Based on this survey it is difficult to state definitively that no data collection/analysis/publication occur within certain countries or within certain areas of the market. The survey may not have detected any, but there may still be some carried out that have not been detected by the survey. The survey has been used to produce an inventory table, summarising the data collection effort in each country to inform further work in the project. The data were analysed for the entire sample and were split into responses from EU27+EFTA, other European and non-European countries to provide an overview of the data collection effort in each of these country groups. A comparison of EU15 and newer member states was also carried out and Mediterranean countries (MOAN) were considered separately. The relatively low response rate made comparisons difficult and means that only general observations can be made. The data types that are most commonly collected are production data, especially land area, followed by production volume; whereas production value is much less commonly collected. However, production area data are not the main focus of the survey or of the OrganicDataNetwork project. Price data and retail sales data are the next most commonly collected market data. Export data are more commonly collected in non-European countries than in the EU, perhaps reflecting a higher importance to their economies. The product categories most often represented in EU27+EFTA market data collection are meat, milk and dairy products, fruit and vegetables. Across the other groups of countries (e.g. other European, non-European) the pattern of data collection of individual product categories varies with regards to the most popular products. Data on non-food products are rarely collected. Data collection methods vary with the type of data collected, but surveys are a commonly used method across data types. Censuses are often used to collect production volume data and other types of data such as international trade data (they are not used to collect data in non-European countries). Expert estimates are occasionally used across most of the country categories. For retail data and consumer price data, consumer/household panels or retail panels (scanner data) are likely to be used, whereas catering sales data are collected by surveys. Import and export data are generally collected using surveys and sometimes censuses but some reliance is also placed on expert estimates. The data analysis carried out in the different countries (across all of the categories) tends to be compilation or basic analysis (such as averages, and ranges). Other methods mentioned include time-evolution, comparison to averages or totals, and sense-checking with other data (particularly for export data). The responses to the question about data publication suggest generally low publication rates (especially for data other than production data); with less than 50% of the sample in each disaggregated group of countries giving a positive answer. Of all the data types that were asked about, production data are most likely to be freely available, but not all production data that are collected are also published. Data are usually published annually; price, retail or export data are occasionally published more frequently. Conclusions The purpose of this survey was to produce an inventory and an overview of collectors of organic market data in Europe and its neighbouring countries. The results have delivered a good picture of the situation in Europe and have shown that the recent claims, coming from various sources,regarding a lack of organic market data were definitely justified. Overall it can be concluded that the market data collection effort remains very varied across Europe and that not all data that are collected are also published. This is problematic, as without good quality, accurate and timely information it is difficult for stakeholders to make decisions about the risks and benefits of investment. There is also a need to understand the reasons why there is currently not more organic market data collection undertaken as well as to understand the barriers to good quality data collection and dissemination. This is the basis for further work on harmonisation of data collection approaches and for improvement in data quality, which is planned as part of the OrganicDataNetwork project

GOVERNMENT MARKET INTERVENTION: AN ECONOMETRIC STUDY OF TANZANIAN FOOD GRAIN MARKETS

The paper is organized into six major sections. Background and trends in agricultural production and trade are presented in Section II. The extent of government intervention in food grain production and trade is described in Section III. This provides a foundation for Section IV where the behavioral equations for defining government intervention in food grain markets are specified. These equations, along with the retail demand and farm level supply equations, yield six equations in six endogenous variables for each of the food grain crops, maize, wheat and rice. It is shown in Section V that the model provides a good fit to the data. In the concluding sections, simulations are performed to obtain insights into the effect on and motivation for government intervention in food grain markets.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Programming matrix optics into Mathematica

The various non-linear transformations incurred by the rays in an optical system can be modelled by matrix products up to any desired order of approximation. Mathematica software has been used to find the appropriate matrix coefficients for the straight path transformation and for the transformations induced by conical surfaces, both direction change and position offset. The same software package was programmed to model optical systems in seventh-order. A Petzval lens was used to exemplify the modelling power of the program.Comment: 15 page

Observational properties of a kink unstable coronal loop

Aims. Previous work on the dynamics of the kink instability has concentrated on the evolution of the magnetic field and associated current sheets. Here we aim to determine the observational consequences of the kink instability in short coronal loops, particularly what images TRACE would record of such an instability. This paper concentrates on the internal m = 1 mode where the kink structure of the instability may not be apparent from the global field shape. This is most relevant to the observation of active region brightenings and coronal bright points. Methods. An existing fluid code was modified to include the TRACE temperature response function in order to calculate temporally and spatially averaged, line of sight images in the 171, 195 and 284 Å band passes for straight, kink unstable flux tubes. Results. Two new fluid effects of the kink instability are discovered: the circular enhancement of the density at the foot points and the appearance of a low density band running across the flux tube. The second of these effects is shown to be imagable by TRACE and hence would be a good candidate observational signature for an internal m = 1 kink unstable loop

Beyond the hashtag : circumventing content moderation on social media

Social media companies make important decisions about what counts as “problematic” content and how they will remove it. Some choose to moderate hashtags, blocking the results for certain tag searches and issuing public service announcements (PSAs) when users search for troubling terms. The hashtag has thus become an indicator of where problematic content can be found, but this has produced limited understandings of how such content actually circulates. Using pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) communities as a case study, this article explores the practices of circumventing hashtag moderation in online pro-ED communities. It shows how (1) untagged pro-ED content can be found without using the hashtag as a search mechanism; (2) users are evading hashtag and other forms of platform policing, devising signals to identify themselves as “pro-ED”; and (3) platforms’ recommendation systems recirculate pro-ED content, revealing the limitations of hashtag logics in social media content moderation

Growing Up Healthy in Minnesota

An evaluation of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation's Growing Up Healthy Program. In spring 2002, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation made grants to nine organizations around the state to improve access to and use of preventive medical and dental services for children and teens. Focused particularly on the needs of immigrant communities and communities of color, the $1.4 million Growing Up Healthy program aimed ultimately to improve the health of Minnesotans at highest risk for lifelong health disparities.In keeping with the goals of the initiative, over 90 percent of children who received or were connected with a preventive health or dental exam were in communities of color. Growing Up Healthy reached an estimated 17,500 people in two years