The Canadian Bioproducts Industry Analysis of the Bioproduct Development Survey - 2004

Bioproducts are often presented as one of the potential saviours of Canadian agriculture, offering non-food applications for agricultural products. However, relatively little is known about the sector or the characteristics of the firms. This paper presents an analysis of the Canadian bioproducts sector based on the first survey of bioproduct firms in Canada. The survey was performed by Statistics Canada in 2004 using 2003 firm results. The paper analyzes the responses to the bioproducts survey on two important dimensions, by region and firm size. The results indicate that for most of Canada's 232 bioproducts firms, bioproducts are just one part of the business activities, accounting for less than one third of employees and slightly more than one quarter of total firm revenue. Bioproduct activities provide both market and environmental benefits. The major challenges to the industry are financing and regulation. However, the relative importance of bioproducts, benefits and strategies and the focus and success of firms vary dramatically by region and by firm size.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

An Analysis of Financing Innovation and Commercialization in Canada's Functional Food and Nutraceutical Sector

Growing consumer interest in functional foods and nutraceuticals has been seen as a significant business opportunity for the agri-food sector. Many of the new firms in this sector are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). These SMEs often face difficulties in obtaining financing for their functional food and nutraceutical innovation activities. We develop and implement two models to show what factors affect a firm's decision to seek external financing and the level of financing obtained. Firm size, being privately held and engaging in contractual arrangements, have negative impacts on the likelihood of a firm seeking external funding, while firms which are intensively involved in the functional food and nutraceutical sector, with greater prospects for business expansion and/or are involved in partnerships are more likely to seek external financing. Larger firms and those involved in functional food and nutraceutical research and development receive a greater amount of capital when they decided to raise capital. However, firms focused on functional foods and nutraceuticals, as opposed to more diversified firms, and those involved in product development and concept scale-up receive less capital. Our findings highlight the importance of public support in addressing the capital requirements of functional food and nutraceutical firms and underscore the considerable burden in this respect borne by smaller sized firms.Agribusiness,

Dimensions of oral health related quality of life measured by EQ-5D+ and OHIP-14

BACKGROUND: The aims of the study were to compare the dimensions of oral-health-related quality-of-life measured by a generic health state measure, the EuroQol, and a specific oral health measure, the Oral Health Impact Profile. METHODS: Data were collected in 2001–02 from a random sample of South Australian dentists using mailed self-complete questionnaires. Dentists recorded the diagnosis of dental problems and provided patients with self-complete questionnaires to record the nature, severity and duration of symptoms using the EuroQol (EQ-5D+) and 14-item version of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) instruments. RESULTS: Data were available from 375 patients (response rate = 72%). The EuroQol items of mobility, self care and usual activities formed a separate cluster of variables, as did anxiety/depression and cognition, while pain clustered with items from the OHIP physical pain subscale. OHIP items tended to form clusters consistent with the subscales of social disability, physical disability, physical pain, functional limitation and psychological discomfort. The OHIP handicap items clustered between the OHIP social disability and physical disability subscales. The OHIP psychological disability items split between the social disability and psychological discomfort subscales. CONCLUSIONS: The observed clusters of variables empirically supported most of the conceptual dimensions of the OHIP. Both instruments covered symptom experience of pain indicating overlapping domains. However there was partial separation of the generic and specific items, EuroQol covered daily activities such as self-care and usual activities and OHIP covered oral health-specific aspects of functional limitation and physical disability as well as psychological and social aspects of disability and handicap

Periodontal Disease in Five and Six Year Old Children

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141478/1/jper0019.pd

Simplifying the Development, Use and Sustainability of HPC Software

Developing software to undertake complex, compute-intensive scientific processes requires a challenging combination of both specialist domain knowledge and software development skills to convert this knowledge into efficient code. As computational platforms become increasingly heterogeneous and newer types of platform such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing become more widely accepted for HPC computations, scientists require more support from computer scientists and resource providers to develop efficient code and make optimal use of the resources available to them. As part of the libhpc stage 1 and 2 projects we are developing a framework to provide a richer means of job specification and efficient execution of complex scientific software on heterogeneous infrastructure. The use of such frameworks has implications for the sustainability of scientific software. In this paper we set out our developing understanding of these challenges based on work carried out in the libhpc project.Comment: 4 page position paper, submission to WSSSPE13 worksho

An Update on the Science of Acidification in the Adirondack Park

This paper provides a review of the science pertaining to all aspects of acidification in the Adirondack Park, updating an earlier review of the science (Cook et al. 2002). The review supports an ongoing social science investigation into the willingness to pay for ecological improvements that would result from reduced acid deposition. This paper builds a bridge between the physical science and social science by providing the background that will allow researchers to accurately summarize the crucial elements of ecological status and improvement in a stated preference survey.acid rain, acidification, stated preference, willingness to pay, benefit estimation

Oral Health in South Australia - 2008

Oral health in South Australia 2008 provides a comprehensive summary of the oral health of South Australian residents. This publication was developed from a range of surveys conducted by the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH) and administrative data provided by state dental services. Information provided in this publication includes data on caries experience and periodontal diseases of children and adults, tooth retention and loss among adults, access to dental care, cost of dental care and the dental labour force. Information on the oral health of Indigenous children and adults is also provided. The publication highlights the recent increase in the level of dental decay among primary and secondary school children, the low percentage of school aged children visiting the school dental service, the extent of individual out-of-pocket expenditure on dental services, and issues with access to dentists and dental hygienists outside of the Adelaide metropolitan area

The LightSail 2 Solar Sailing Mission Summary

The LightSail 2 mission concluded a 3-year mission in November 2022, having successfully demonstrated controlled solar sailing in low-Earth orbit using a CubeSat platform. Flight data show that LightSail 2 successfully controlled its orientation relative to the Sun, with sustained periods of apogee raising and increasing orbital energy. The LightSail 2 solar sail was 5.6 m on a side and has a total deployed area of 32 m². Four independent triangular aluminized Mylar® sail sections 4.6 microns thick were Z-folded and stowed into four sail bays. The sail segments were deployed by four 4 m Triangular Retractable And Collapsible booms made of elgiloy. The booms were wound around a common spindle, with deployment driven by a Faulhaber motor containing Hall sensors. Attitude was controlled using a single-axis Sinclair Interplanetary momentum wheel and magnetic torque rods. During solar sailing operations, two 90 degree slews were performed each orbit to harness momentum from solar photons. The thrust from solar radiation pressure measurably reduced the rate of orbital decay, including an extended period of orbit raising. Two Planetary Society Cameras developed by the Aerospace Corporation were mounted at the tips of opposing solar panels, providing imaging for engineering evaluation and public engagement throughout mission operations. This paper provides a summary of the LightSail 2 mission implementation, including the flight system design and the pre-launch test program. LightSail 2 mission operations are described, including discussion of the ground system. Solar sailing performance is presented, and anomalies encountered during the mission are discussed. The Planetary Society\u27s decade-long LightSail program was entirely donor-funded, with over 50,000 contributors worldwide. With a total cost of about $7M for two flight missions, the LightSail program showed that solar sails can provide a cost-effective option for propulsion of CubeSat-class vehicles

Positive and negative affect and oral health-related quality of life

BACKGROUND: The aims of the study were to assess the impact of both positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) on self-reported oral health-related quality of life and to determine the effect of including affectivity on the relationship between oral health-related quality of life and a set of explanatory variables consisting of oral health status, socio-economic status and dental visiting pattern. METHODS: A random sample of 45–54 year-olds from metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia was surveyed by mailed self-complete questionnaire during 2004–05 with up to four follow-up mailings of the questionnaire to non-respondents (n = 986 responded, response rate = 44.4%). Oral health-related quality of life was measured using OHIP-14 and affectivity using the Bradburn scale. Using OHIP-14 and subscales as the dependent variables, regression models were constructed first using oral health status, socio-economic characteristics and dental visit pattern and then adding PA and NA as independent variables, with nested models tested for change in R-squared values. RESULTS: PA and NA exhibited a negative correlation of -0.49 (P < 0.01). NA accounted for a larger percentage of variance in OHIP-14 scores (3.0% to 7.3%) than PA (1.4% to 4.6%). In models that included both PA and NA, PA accounted for 0.2% to 1.1% of variance in OHIP-14 scores compared to 1.8% to 3.9% for NA. CONCLUSION: PA and NA both accounted for additional variance in quality of life scores, but did not substantially diminish the effect of established explanatory variables such as oral health status, socio-economic status and dental visit patterns