Introduction: The Dynamics of Epistemic Communities

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MARKETING COLORADO POTATOES AS A VALUE-ADDED PRODUCT: A CASE STUDY

Potato producers in Colorado (and nationwide) have been facing a continued downward trend in potato commodity prices. In an attempt to increase demand for potatoes, these growers had Colorado State University (CSU) researchers perform a market study regarding the viability of marketing a value-added potato. A survey was performed which asked consumers to identify important potato characteristics, their willingness to pay for these characteristics, and what might prompt them to purchase more fresh or processed potatoes in the future. This paper discusses the results and recommendations that CSU made to the Colorado potato producers.Marketing,

New Players for the Old Tobacco Game: the Czech Republic and Romania; It\u27s Time to Change the Rules

Cigarette and tobacco advertisements have become a part of life in the Czech Republic and Romania. In the Czech Republic, Camel cigarettes, manufactured by R.J. Reynolds, sponsored weddings in which taxis bearing the Camel logo transported guests from the wed- ding to the reception.\u27 In Romania, Kent cigarettes, manufactured by British and American Tobacco Company (BAT), sponsored the ex- tremely popular television show Dallas. 3 Unfortunately, the health consequences of cigarette use, which lead to the annual death of three million people around the world,4 have also become a part of daily life. In 1995, almost 20% of the Czech Republic\u27s death rate, 22,000 deaths out of a total 125,000, was attributable to deaths from smoking- related illnesses.5 In Romania, an increase in the incidence of lung cancer in Bucharest was reported.6 In Eastern Europe as a whole, the projected smoking-related deaths for the decade will be three million.

Review of Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women\u27s Fiction

My favourite exam \u27howler\u27 came from a first year student who wrote lyrically of the episode in Wuthering Heights in which Cathy opened the window, \u27and the Moors came pounding in\u27 - as though a hundred dark-skinned men on horseback came trampling over Cathy\u27s prostrate body. Susan Meyer\u27s book, Imperialism at Home, while in no way suggesting anything so ludicrous as a north African invasion of a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors, does, nevertheless, lend a certain logic to the idea. Meyer\u27s point is that we should read the abundant oriental imagery and allusions in Victorian fiction by women much more literally than we would usually be inclined. For Meyer, such imagery is not simply representative of some indeterminate exoticism, or passion, or power, but rather a sign of the real economic and social relations of colonialism that underpinned the domestic world represented in the novel. This, of course, is not new ground. Since the publication of Edward Said\u27s Orientalism (1979), the geo-political world of European literature has been opened up, exploded even, by the realization that within it can be identified signs of Europe\u27s economic and cultural exploitation of the East. In her study Meyer draws on, and enters into debate with critics such as Said, and others who have explored these ideas specifically in relation to the nineteenth-century novel, such as Azim, Brantlinger, Spivak, and Sharpe. Often the differences between Meyer\u27s work and previously published studies are small ones - points of emphasis rather than widely differing interpretations. Her particular focus is the way in which the insistent linking - or as she puts it, \u27yoking\u27 - of white women and peoples of non-European races is negotiated in the works of three canonical British women, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and George Elio

Vertical Integration in Produce Markets: A Colorado Cooperative’s Strategic Response to Change

An evolving produce industry has placed vegetable growers in northern Colorado at a competitive disadvantage. The Colorado producers’ strategic response is to form a value-added, cold storage processing cooperative in the hopes of establishing a better position for marketing their vegetables on a year-round basis. This case study discusses the results of both a market demand and processing feasibility study conducted for these vegetable growers.cooperative, feasibility study, vegetable processing plant, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Is Climate Change Mitigation the Best Use of Desert Shrublands?

In a world where the metrics of the carbon economy have become a major issue, it may come as a surprise that intact cold desert shrublands can sequester significant amounts of carbon, both as biomass and in the form of SOC (soil organic carbon). Xerophytic shrubs invest heavily in belowground biomass, placing fixed carbon in an environment where it turns over only very slowly. In order for humans to gain this important ecosystem service, desert shrublands must be kept intact and prevented from frequent burning. The biggest threat to shrubland integrity is the invasion of exotic annual grasses that increase fire frequency to the point that most shrubs can no longer persist. Not only do annual grasslands sequester very little carbon, they also increase the turnover rate of existing SOC. From the point of view of carbon sequestration, restoring the many millions of hectares of annual grass dysclimax in the Interior West to functioning shrubland ecosystems should have high priority. The elimination of perennial understory vegetation and cryptobiotic crusts is a nearly inevitable consequence of livestock grazing in deserts. This opens these systems to annual grass invasion, subsequent burning, and loss of a major carbon sink, a heavy price to pay for the minimal economic gains derived from direct use of these intrinsically unproductive lands for livestock production. On a more immediate scale, the conversion of stable desert shrublands to annual grasslands that burn frequently has also created major issues with windblown dust. Good evidence exists to show that deposition of this dust on mountain snowpack can have the effect of reducing water yield by causing premature melting. Water is clearly the most limiting resource for agriculture in our region, and protecting mountain watersheds from dust deposition should become another important priority. As climate disruption in all its forms becomes a major threat to production agriculture, it is imperative that serious steps be taken to minimize this threat, including restoration of degraded shrubland ecosystems, and prevention of degradation of shrublands that are still intact. Here the argument is made that the best use of cold desert shrublands is mitigation of both short term and long term climate disruption

Hastening slowly: insights about teacher development from an evaluation of courses at the WCED’s Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute

AbstractIn the area of teacher professional development, South African education administratorsface the challenge of reconciling two imperatives that have entirely different implicationsfor programme time frames and budgets. On the one hand, there is an urgent need toimprove the pedagogic content knowledge of many teachers to improve the overall standardof teaching and learning in the public school system. Considering the scale and urgency ofthe matter, centralised course-based in-service training seems to be the only affordablealternative. On the other hand, researchers have long warned that once-off course-basedtraining on its own has limited impact on teachers’ practice, and has to be accompanied byfurther professional support in the school and classroom, or be abandoned in favour of moreenduring professional learning communities. The Western Cape Education Department(WCED) has grappled with this dilemma in the Department’s various professionaldevelopment initiatives for teachers, a mainstay of which is the training offered by the CapeTeaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI). This paper presents some of the data andfindings from an external evaluation that ORT SA CAPE conducted in 2011–2012 ofcourses offered by the WCED at the CTLI. The hierarchy of INSET outcomes proposed byHarland and Kinder (1997) was applied to record changes in the practice of 18 teachers ateight schools. The progress of five of the teachers is discussed to illustrate the interplaybetween school-level factors and the experiences of individual teachers which influencedthe impact of CTLI training on their teaching.Introductio

Interventions for treating oral mucositis for patients with cancer receiving treatment

Background Treatment of cancer is increasingly effective but is associated with short and long term side effects. Oral and gastrointestinal side effects, including oral candidiasis, remain a major source of illness despite the use of a variety of agents to treat them. Objectives To assess the effectiveness of interventions for the treatment of oral candidiasis for patients with cancer receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy or both. Search strategy Computerised searches of Cochrane Oral Health Group and PaPaS Trials Registers (to 1 June 2010), CENTRAL via the Cochrane Library (Issue 2, 2010, 1 June 2010), MEDLINE via OVID (1 June 2010), EMBASE via OVID (1 June 2010), CINAHL via EBSCO (1 June 2010), CANCERLIT via PubMed (1 June 2010), OpenSIGLE (1 June 2010) and LILACS via Virtual Health Library (1 June 2010) were undertaken. Reference lists fromrelevant articles were searched and the authors of eligible trials were contacted to identify trials and obtain additional information. Selection criteria All randomised controlled trials comparing agents prescribed to treat oral candidiasis in people receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. The outcomes were eradication of oral candidiasis, dysphagia, systemic infection, amount of analgesia, length of hospitalisation, cost and patient quality of life. Data collection and analysis Data were independently extracted, in duplicate, by two review authors. Trial authors were contacted for details of randomisation and withdrawals and a quality assessment was carried out. Risk ratios (RR) were calculated using fixed-effect models. Main results Ten trials involving 940 patients, satisfied the inclusion criteria and are included in this review. Drugs absorbed from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract were beneficial in eradication of oral candidiasis compared with drugs not absorbed from the GI tract (three trials: RR = 1.29, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09 to 1.52), however there was significant heterogeneity. A drug absorbed from the GI tract, ketoconazole, wasmore beneficial than placebo in eradicating oral candidiasis (one trial: RR = 3.61, 95% CI 1.47 to 8.88). Clotrimazole, at a higher dose of 50 mg was more effective than a lower 10 mg dose in eradicating oral candidiasis, when assessed mycologically (one trial: RR = 2.00, 95% CI 1.11 to 3.60). Only one of the ten trials was assessed as at low risk of bias. Authors' conclusions There is insufficient evidence to claimor refute a benefit for any antifungal agent in treating candidiasis. Further well designed, placebo-controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of old and new interventions for treating oral candidiasis are needed. Clinicians need to make a decision on whether to prevent or treat oral candidiasis in patients receiving treatment for cancer. This review is published as a Cochrane Review in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 7. Cochrane Reviews are regularly updated as new evidence emerges and in response to comments and criticisms, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews should be consulted for the most recent version of the Review.</p

Electronic Intervention and Platforms and Their Impacts on Crowdfunding Behavior

Crowdfunding is a method of raising funds for projects, creative pursuits, peer-to-peer lending, and charitable causes. The idea of crowdfunding stems from the more encompassing concept of crowdsourcing, which refers not only to the gathering of funds, but to group participation in the convergence of ideas and content creation. Thus, crowdfunding can be considered to be one type of crowdsourcing. The following study examines the crowdfunding behavior of a sample of business professionals located in the service sector of metropolitan Pittsburgh, PA. In general, the empirical findings suggested that smaller goals tend to have better success ratios, while getting the targets achieved tends to attract more donors, especially when a goal is nearly met. Contrary to findings in some previous literature, there appears to be a weak link between respondents’ social networking use and familiarity with crowdfunding. Furthermore, respondents’ charitable giving habits did not closely link with crowdfunding solicitation behavior. Finally, there was a weak connection between crowdfunding behavior and income, but age did reveal a significant connection. Interest in the project can be limiting. Some sites only focus on creative and fun projects. If the creator’s project does not catch the attention and interest of donors, then it may receive little to no support. This can be made worse by similar projects competing for the same donors. The pool of donors may be limiting. Depending on the type and scope of the project, the amount and class of people a project will interest will be limited. Some sites only allow each donor to make a donation up to a certain amount so the number of donors would be very important. Other sites may require a minimum donation amount, so the class of donors targeted could be very important