EU regulation concerning genetically modified products: an issue of food security or a measure of disguised protectionism?

The biggest producers and exporters of agricultural products have been adopting the genetic engineering in order to improve the factors productivity and the firms profits In the last decade, the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU) have established a high divergent regulation on production, distribution and consumption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Apparently, the EU's complex legislative framework related to GMOs was intend to satisfy the European consumers which are concerned about food safety and whish to make more informed choice about the food they eat. The aim of this paper is to understand the potential motivations behind the different policies on GM products adopted by US and EU.Genetically Modified Organisms; Consumers preferences; Food security; Technical barriers to trade.

Análise da participação da agropecuária no PIB dos EUA de 1960 a 2001

This paper analyses the evolution of agriculture’s participation in the US gross domestic product (GDP) from 1960 to 2001. An econometric model is run in order to identify the main variables that determine this participation. From 1960 to 2001, there is a downward trend of agriculture’s participation in the US GDP with a break from 1971 to 1973, in other words, agriculture’s participation in the US GDP decreased from 1960 to 1970, increased from 1971 to 1973 and decreased again from 1973 to 2001. The 1971-1973´s break in the downward trend of agriculture’s participation is econometrically proved. Dataset organized in graphs show grain and meat production steadily enlarged from 1970 to 2001, what is closely related to the productivity increase and federal grants to agriculture, despite the ratio of received/paid prices decreased during this 31 years. An accounting model is presented to show the main variables that determine agriculture’s participation in a country’s GDP and an econometric model is derived from this accounting model. Running this econometric model with 1973-2001´s US dataset, the following variables are the most important to determine the participation of agriculture in the US GDP: received/paid prices ratio, lagged value of agriculture’s participation in the GDP, and total factor productivity of the agriculture.GDP, agriculture importance, econometric model, The USA, Agribusiness, Q10, A10,

Techniques for effective and efficient fire detection from social media images

Social media could provide valuable information to support decision making in crisis management, such as in accidents, explosions and fires. However, much of the data from social media are images, which are uploaded in a rate that makes it impossible for human beings to analyze them. Despite the many works on image analysis, there are no fire detection studies on social media. To fill this gap, we propose the use and evaluation of a broad set of content-based image retrieval and classification techniques for fire detection. Our main contributions are: (i) the development of the Fast-Fire Detection method (FFDnR), which combines feature extractor and evaluation functions to support instance-based learning, (ii) the construction of an annotated set of images with ground-truth depicting fire occurrences -- the FlickrFire dataset, and (iii) the evaluation of 36 efficient image descriptors for fire detection. Using real data from Flickr, our results showed that FFDnR was able to achieve a precision for fire detection comparable to that of human annotators. Therefore, our work shall provide a solid basis for further developments on monitoring images from social media.Comment: 12 pages, Proceedings of the International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems. Specifically: Marcos Bedo, Gustavo Blanco, Willian Oliveira, Mirela Cazzolato, Alceu Costa, Jose Rodrigues, Agma Traina, Caetano Traina, 2015, Techniques for effective and efficient fire detection from social media images, ICEIS, 34-4

Large Graph Analysis in the GMine System

Current applications have produced graphs on the order of hundreds of thousands of nodes and millions of edges. To take advantage of such graphs, one must be able to find patterns, outliers and communities. These tasks are better performed in an interactive environment, where human expertise can guide the process. For large graphs, though, there are some challenges: the excessive processing requirements are prohibitive, and drawing hundred-thousand nodes results in cluttered images hard to comprehend. To cope with these problems, we propose an innovative framework suited for any kind of tree-like graph visual design. GMine integrates (a) a representation for graphs organized as hierarchies of partitions - the concepts of SuperGraph and Graph-Tree; and (b) a graph summarization methodology - CEPS. Our graph representation deals with the problem of tracing the connection aspects of a graph hierarchy with sub linear complexity, allowing one to grasp the neighborhood of a single node or of a group of nodes in a single click. As a proof of concept, the visual environment of GMine is instantiated as a system in which large graphs can be investigated globally and locally

Avaliação das mudanças na política de garantia de preços mínimos: período de 1997 a 2004

This paper evaluates the main changes that happened in the Brazilian policies of agricultural minimum price since 1997, paying attention to operational issues and discrepancies among regions and products that occurred when implementing those policies. In 1996, Brazilian Federal Government created two new programs, Prêmio de Escoamento de Produto (PEP) and Contratos de Opções de Venda de Produtos Agropecuários (COVPA), in addition to other two traditional programs (Aquisição do Governo Federal, AGF, and Empréstimos do Governo Federal, EGF). However, the new programs only were implemented one year after. Since then, these four Federal programs of minimum prices have had different performances. This paper evaluates those differences, highlighting unequal distribution of these programs among products and regions. COVPA is concentrated in corn crops, PEP favored cotton and AGF is biased to rice and beans. Moreover, Center-Western states are favored in using these programs and Northern and Northeastern states little used these programs.Agricultural and Food Policy, Minimum price, Policies, Regions, Brazil,

Análise da Evolução e da Estrutura da Siderurgia Brasileira e do Uso de Carvão Vegetal no período de 1980 a 2006

O presente trabalho analisa a evolução e estrutura da siderurgia brasileira e do uso do carvão vegetal no período de 1980 a 2006. Os objetivos específicos são: 1) analisar a evolução da produção, consumo, exportação e importação dos principais produtos elaborados por esta indústria, separando os que usam carvão vegetal e os que usam carvão mineral; e 2) caracterizar a estrutura da indústria (número de produtores, número de consumidores, tipos de produtos selecionados, entre outras variáveis). Em relação ao primeiro objetivo deste trabalho, evolução da indústria siderúrgica, contatou-se que o Brasil vem aumentando sua capacidade produtiva e sua inserção no mercado internacional. Quanto ao segundo objetivo específico deste trabalho, estrutura da indústria, observou-se a presença de 28 usinas, integradas ou semi-integradas, distribuídas em 10 estados brasileiros e controladas por 10 grupos empresariais. Ainda vale salientar a concentração da produção nacional de aço bruto no Sudeste e a crescente concentração da produção em poucos grupos, seguindo uma tendência mundial de fusões e aquisições no setor. No entanto, não se observa grande diferença de poder de mercado entre os grupos siderúrgicos.------------------------------The present paper analyses the evolution and structure of Brazilian Steel Industry and the use of charcoal in time period from 1980 to 2006. The specific objectives are: 1) analyze the evolution of production, consumption, exports, and imports of main product of this industry, separating the products that are made of charcoal and the ones made of coal; and 2) describe the industry structure (number of producers, number of consumers, types of selected products, and another variables). In relation to the first specific objective of this paper, steel industry evolution, Brazil is increasing its productive capacity and its insertion in the international market. Concerning to the second specific objective of this work, industry structure, Brazil has 28 steel mills, integrated or semi-integrated, distributed in 10 Brazilian states and controlled by 10 business groups. In addition to, it is possible to observe the concentration of steel domestic production in southeast and the crescent concentration of the sector, following the word tendency of merges and acquisitions in this sector. However, there is no evidence about big difference of market share among among steel industry groups.Siderurgia, Carvão, Brasil, Indústria, teel Industry, Charcoal, Brazil, Industry, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,