UK and EU policy for approval of pesticides suitable for organic systems: Implications for Wales

This study was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to review the pesticide approval system in the UK and Europe as far as it affects the use of substances and techniques for crop protection by organic producers in Wales. WAG considers it important that the UK pesticide approval system does not present unnecessary barriers to the development of organic production in Wales. Key Recommendations and scope for further work · WAG should work with the Pesticides Safety Directorate to ensure that the development of pesticide regulatory policy at both National and European level takes full account of the needs of both conventional and organic agriculture and horticulture in the UK. · There is scope for WAG to support the development of a National Pesticide Policy so that regulatory and commercial barriers impeding the development of organic pesticides are minimised. Not only could greater availability of ‘organic pesticides’ have a significant impact on organic production in Wales but there could be important implications for conventional horticulture systems and the use of alternatives to conventional pesticides. · One important regulatory barrier to the registration of ‘organic pesticides’ is the MRL requirement(s) for their approval and this needs to be resolved. Suitable analytical techniques are required to determine firstly whether these substances result in residues, and secondly to identify the breakdown and residue pathways. So far, this issue has not received the attention of any EU Member State. · According to the proposed framework for the 4th Stage Review of EU Pesticides Directive 91/414, notifiers are required to produce a dossier, at their own expense, covering characterisation, human toxicity, ecotoxicity efficacy and other relevant data. The Review includes specific provision for companies notifying the same substance to submit a shared dossier. This will help those businesses (many of which are relatively small companies) to save on the high cost of producing the dossiers. It will also aid the Commission since it will reduce the number of dossiers that have to be considered, and ensure that all the available data is included. WAG should encourage and support the production of collective dossiers; although as yet there is no indication of how this will be done in practice, and further details from the Commission are awaited. · This study has concluded that access to a wider range of ‘organically acceptable pesticides’ would not have a dramatic impact on organic production in Wales. However, in developing an integrated organic policy, WAG should continue to address the pesticides issue. Some of the methods of pest & disease control in organic systems are either physical or multi-cellular e.g. micro-organisms used as biocontrol agents. WAG agri environment policy may provide a vehicle to promote these techniques much more actively. Further, it is important to recognise that while Wales alone is too small to have a major impact on commercial and regulatory pressures, WAG can have an impact by working pro-actively with others to make progress. · There are no published EU or national Member State criteria that can be used to evaluate the acceptability of pesticide substances for organic production. Identifying such criteria and promoting their acceptance at EU level and nationally would allow more active substances to be made available. WAG should work with PSD and others to identify appropriate criteria. · The specific provisions of Article 7 in Annex 2(b) of the Organic Regulation (2092/91) place potential barriers to the adoption of organically acceptable substances for crop protection. There are a number of potentially useful substances currently not included in the Organic Regulation e.g. potassium bicarbonate. WAG should work with PSD and others to identify such substances and support the production of appropriate dossiers. WAG could also encourage further dialogue between the organic sector and Defra to identify amendments in the Organic Regulations to facilitate the inclusion of new pesticides. · Organic pest and disease management is not just a question of inputs but it also relies crucially on advice and extension through initiatives such as Farming Connect and the work of Organic Centre Wales. Long-term commitment to supporting on going advice and extension activities is vital to promote and disseminate best practice in Welsh agriculture and horticulture. · Organic horticulture, vegetable and fruit production systems are particularly sensitive to pest and disease management. Successful control of pests, diseases (and weeds) in these sectors can be critical to the business, and is not assured even when all husbandry and management methods have been effectively applied. Consequently, the use of organically acceptable crop protection methods resulting from future developments (e.g. biopesticides, biological control agents) could have an important role in pest and disease management in these sectors. Both organic and conventional producers in Wales could benefit from having these options available to them and WAG could encourage the adoption of these approaches through appropriate Technology Transfer activities. · The way in which such substances will be regulated at a European level in future is evolving as the review of the Pesticide Directive 91/414 EEC enters the 4th Stage. This stage of the review includes (amongst others) those substances permitted for use in organic production. The guidance documents for the evaluation of applications on plant protection products made from plants or plant extracts and from chemical substances are currently at the draft stage. The response of the Pesticide Safety Directorate and Defra to these developments is not yet clear but this provides an excellent opportunity for WAG to have an input at an early stage in the review process

The measurement of low pay in the UK labour force survey

Consideration of the National Minimum Wage requires estimates of the distribution of hourly pay. The UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a key source of such estimates. The approach most frequently adopted by researchers has been to measure hourly earnings from several questions on pay and hours. The Office for National Statistics is now applying a new approach, based on an alternative more direct measurement introduced in March 1999. These two measures do not produce identical values and this paper investigates sources of discrepancies and concludes that the new variable is more accurate. The difficulty with using the new variable is that it is only available on a subset of respondents. An approach is developed in which missing values of the new variable are replaced by imputed values. The assumptions underlying this imputation approach and results of applying it to LFS data are presented. The relation to weighting approaches is also discussed

Hot electrons in low-dimensional phonon systems

A simple bulk model of electron-phonon coupling in metals has been surprisingly successful in explaining experiments on metal films that actually involve surface- or other low-dimensional phonons. However, by an exact application of this standard model to a semi-infinite substrate with a free surface, making use of the actual vibrational modes of the substrate, we show that such agreement is fortuitous, and that the model actually predicts a low-temperature crossover from the familiar T^5 temperature dependence to a stronger T^6 log T scaling. Comparison with existing experiments suggests a widespread breakdown of the standard model of electron-phonon thermalization in metals

Use of a formulated diet for mussel spat <i>Mytilus galloprovincialis</i> (Lamarck 1819) in a commercial hatchery

In the present study we evaluated the musselspat feed MySpat formulated by INVE Technologies (Dendermonde. Belgium) in combination with small quantities of microalgae as a complete diet for young mussel seed Mytilus galloprovincialis (Lamarck 1819). Three different food levels were tested: a continuous algae supply over a period of 24 h of, 150 cells µl-1(Control diet 1, C 1), 75 µl-1 (C 2) and 24 cells µl-1 (C 3). In three additional treatments C 2 was supplemented with 2.8% and C 3 with 2.8% and 4.3% MySpat respectively. Percentage was calculated on life weight (LW). Mussel spat belonging to treatments C 3 + 2.8% MySpat and C 3 + 4.3% MySpat gained almost twice as much weight as the mussels fed the nonsupplemented algae diet C 3. There was no significant difference between the two supplementation levels, indicating that a level of 2.8% Was sufficient. The mussel spat that received the supplement MySpat grew as fast as file animals that received 75 cells µl-1 being 702% increase in wet weight (WW) in 3 wk, so the same result was obtained with only 1/3 of the algae. This is interesting when one considers that file mussel spat in the last week of the experiment received 95% dry weight (DW) formulated feed and only 5% DW algae. The growth was well balanced between shell growth and increase of tissue weight, because the organic matter content of the animals was equal to or even higher than the positive control animals. Mussel seed on the C 3 diet had a fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) content of 6.6 mg g DW-1 whereas this content quadrupled to 28.1 mg g DW-1 when 2.8% MySpat was given in addition to the algae diet, reaching levels even higher than for the positive control treatment. The fatty acid composition reflected the diet-composition. hereby proving the ingestion and assimilation of the diet. It is suggested that Mussel seed regulate arachidonic acid (ARA) levels and keep the absolute amount in their tissues at 0.4 mg gDW-1

Statistical Tests for CHDM and \LambdaCDM Cosmologies

We apply several statistical estimators to high-resolution N-body simulations of two currently viable cosmological models: a mixed dark matter model, having $\Omega_\nu=0.2$ contributed by two massive neutrinos (C+2\nuDM), and a Cold Dark Matter model with Cosmological Constant (\LambdaCDM) with $\Omega_0=0.3$ and h=0.7. Our aim is to compare simulated galaxy samples with the Perseus-Pisces redshift survey (PPS). We consider the n-point correlation functions (n=2-4), the N-count probability functions P_N, including the void probability function P_0, and the underdensity probability function U_\epsilon (where \epsilon fixes the underdensity threshold in percentage of the average). We find that P_0 (for which PPS and CfA2 data agree) and P_1 distinguish efficiently between the models, while U_\epsilon is only marginally discriminatory. On the contrary, the reduced skewness and kurtosis are, respectively, S_3\simeq 2.2 and S_4\simeq 6-7 in all cases, quite independent of the scale, in agreement with hierarchical scaling predictions and estimates based on redshift surveys. Among our results, we emphasize the remarkable agreement between PPS data and C+2\nuDM in all the tests performed. In contrast, the above \LambdaCDM model has serious difficulties in reproducing observational data if galaxies and matter overdensities are related in a simple way.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, LaTeX (aaspp4 macro), in press on ApJ, Vol. 479, April 199

Hepatic Focal Nodular Hyperplasia: A Benign Incidentaloma or a Marker of Serious Hepatic Disease?

Amongst 17 patients with hepatic focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) encountered at Westmead Hospital between 1981 and 1990, FNH was found in association with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in three (3/ 17), one male and two females, one of whom also had peliosis and an hepatic adenoma. FNH was also found in association with other conditions which may affect hepatic function, structure or circulation, including chronic obstructive airways disease (2), congestive cardiomyopathy (1), chronic active hepatitis (1), granulomatous hepatitis (1), coeliac artery stenosis (1) and metastatic malignant melanoma (1). This report, derived from our experience with FNH over 10 years draws attention to a possible link between FNH, hepatic malignancy and conditions which may disturb the hepatic circulation. We suggest that patients with FNH should be investigated thoroughly and an aggressive management policy should be adopted

A Case of Cholangitis Glandularis Proliferans and Cholangiocarcinoma of the Common Bile Duct

A case of Cholangitis Glandularis Proliferans (CAGP) in association with a cholangiocarcinoma of the common bile duct as described. This is the eighth case of CAGP described and the second association with cholangiocarcinoma

Lyman-alpha Forest Constraints on the Mass of Warm Dark Matter and the Shape of the Linear Power Spectrum

High resolution N-body simulations of cold dark matter (CDM) models predict that galaxies and clusters have cuspy halos with excessive substructure. Observations reveal smooth halos with central density cores. One possible resolution of this conflict is that the dark matter is warm (WDM); this will suppress the power spectrum on small scales. The Lyman-alpha forest is a powerful probe of the linear power spectrum on these scales. We use collisionless N-body simulations to follow the evolution of structure in WDM models, and analyze artificial Lyman-alpha forest spectra extracted from them. By requiring that there is enough small-scale power in the linear power spectrum to reproduce the observed properties of the Lyman-alpha forest in quasar spectra, we derive a lower limit to the mass of the WDM particle of 750 eV. This limit is robust to reasonable uncertainties in our assumption about the temperature of the mean density gas (T0) at z=3. We argue that any model that suppresses the CDM linear theory power spectrum more severely than a 750 eV WDM particle cannot produce the Lyman-alpha forest.Comment: 13 pages including 4 color Figures and 1 Table, submitted to ApJ Letter

Case Study: Monitoring Sleeping Patterns of a Boy with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and his Caregivers

Please see the pdf version of the abstract