Farm Diversification in Relation to Landscape Properties

Current European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been moving from production support subsidies to direct decoupled income support. The emergence in policy making of the concept of multifunctional agriculture leads to the recognition that a farmer produces more than food: he produces jointly both commodity and non-commodity goods. Environmental contracts were developed in order to encourage the provision of non-commodity goods such as landscape or biodiversity. Next to these contracts, other activities as for example recreation can be observed. They are the result of farm diversification. The role of location in farmers’ decision making to diversify is pointed out in literature but geographical information is generally reduced to the location within a political delimitation unit the empirical work. Objective of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it addresses the role of location, in term of site specific natural conditions as well as neighbouring emerging dynamics in farmer’s decision making to diversify. Attention is paid to number of activities as well as the specific types of activities, notably green services, daily recreation and other farm-linked services. Secondly, this paper introduces income from agriculture explicitly allowing testing short term price sensitivity. It was found that attractive landscape is a driver for diversification as these landscape offer more opportunities. Furthermore, diversification is responsive to price. Thirdly, role of density of past multifunctional activities in the neighborhood influences farm diversification: multifunctional activities create an externality effects as new activities emerge next to already existing ones. This dynamic may lead to the emergence of ‘multifunctional hotspots’ in landscape.Farmer diversification, landscape services, location, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

African Land Ecology: Opportunities and Constraints for Agricultural Development

Current agriculture in Sub-Sahara Africa is undeveloped and the Green Revolution has left the continent largely untouched. Poor performance is often related to a number of socio-economic factors. In this paper we argue that there are also some specifities of natural resources, namely local homogeneity and spatial diversity of the pre-dominant Basement Complex soils, that imply that simple fertilizer strategies may not produce the yield increases obtained elsewhere. Keywords: Sub-Sahara Africa, Agro-Ecology, Land use, Land resources, Basement Complex, Green Revolution, Micronutrients, Fertilizer Policy

Environmental monitoring in heterogeneous soil-landscapes; A Dutch case study

The spatial heterogeneity of agricultural soil-landscapes is mostly not taken into account in environmental policies. Most environmental goals have been defined at national level or farm level but not at the landscape level. The potential for setting up a regional environmental monitoring network that supports self governance was explored. The research was performed in the Northern Friesian Woodland

3MG: Meervoudige Milieu Monitoring voor Gebiedssturing; Een case study voor de Noordelijke Friese Wouden

Sinds 2005 is TransForum betrokken bij een praktijkproject in de Noordelijke Friese Wouden (het project NFW) waarin samen met boeren, bestuurders, overheden en maatschappelijke groepen wordt gezocht naar mogelijkheden om de beoogde zelfsturing vorm en inhoud te geven. Om voor milieukwaliteitdoelen een onderbouwd antwoord te kunnen geven heeft TransForum naast het praktijkproject NFW een meer analytisch gericht wetenschappelijk project ondersteund waarin een operationeel meetinstrument is ontwikkeld en getoetst. In deze studie is gebruik gemaakt van gegevens van aanwezige meetnetten in combinatie met geïntegreerde modellen. Het betreft: ammoniakemissie, stikstofdepositie, grondwaterkwaliteit, oppervlaktewaterkwalitei

Reversal of typical multidrug resistance by cyclosporin and its non-immunosuppressive analogue SDZ PSC 833 in Chinese hamster ovary cells expressing the mdr1 phenotype

Summary The new non-immunosuppressive cyclosporin derivative SDZ PSC 833 (PSC) is a potent agent used to overcome typical multidrug resistance (MDR) associated with overexpression of themdr1 gene encoding for a P-170 glycoprotein. In the present study, the efficacy of PSC as compared with cyclosporin was determined in Chinese hamster ovary cell lines exhibiting different levels of resistance to colchicine (0, 0.1, 0.2 and 10 μg/ml, respectively). Low concentrations of PSC (8.2nm) increased the cytotoxicity of colchicine in cell lines expressing low levels of drug resistance. The concentration resulting in 50% cell survival (LC50 value) found for colchicine alone or in combination with PSC in the CHO-A3 cell line that was resistant to 100 ng colchicine/ml decreased from >500 to 200 ng/ml at 8.2nm PSC and to 500 ng/ml for colchicine alone to 500 ng/ml for colchicine used in combination with 8.2nm PSC and to <100 ng/ml for colchicine combined with 82 or 820nm PSC. At a concentration of 82nm PSC, the maximal effect in MDR reversal was observed in the cell lines exhibiting moderate resistance. In the highly resistant cell line, PSC (820nm) also reversed colchicine resistance. In drug-accumulation experiments, we obtained a 4-fold increase in intracellular doxorubicin accumulation using 820nm PSC. A comparison of PSC with cyclosporin revealed that a cyclosporin concentration 20-fold that of PSC was required to obtain the same sensitising effect. On the basis of these data, it may be concluded that PSC is a most promising chemosensitiser

Prevalence of potential underlying aetiology of macrocytic anaemia in Dutch general practice

Background: Macrocytic anaemia (MCV \xe2\x89\xa5 100 fL) is a relatively common finding in general practice. However, literature on the prevalence of the different causes in this population is limited. The prevalence of macrocytic anaemia and its underlying aetiology were analysed in a general practice population. The potential effect of the different aetiology on survival was also evaluated. Methods: Between the 1st of February 2007 and the 1st of February 2015, patients aged 50 years or older and presenting to their general practitioner with a newly diagnosed anaemia, were included in the study. Anaemia was defined as haemoglobin level below 13.7 g/dL in men and below 12.1 g/dL in women. A broad range of laboratory tests was performed for each patient. The causes of anaemia were consequently determined by two independent observers based on the laboratory results. Results: Of the 3324 included patients, 249 (7.5 %) displayed a macrocytic anaemia and were subsequently analysed. An underlying explanation could be established in 204 patients (81.9 %) with 27 patients (13.2 %) displaying multiple causes. Classic aetiology (i.e. alcohol abuse, vitamin B12/folic acid deficiency, haemolysis and possible bone marrow disease) was found in 115 patients. Alternative causes (i.e. anaemia of chronic disease, iron deficiency, renal anaemia and other causes) were encountered in 101 patients. In addition, a notable finding was the median gamma GT of 277 U/L in patients diagnosed with alcohol abuse (N = 24, IQR 118.0-925.5) and 23 U/L in the remaining cohort (N = 138, IQR 14.0-61.0). The distribution of gamma GT values was statistically different (P < 0.001). Five year survival rates were determined for six categories of causes, ranging from 39.9 % (95 % CI 12.9-66.9) for renal anaemia to 76.2 % (95 % CI 49.4-103.0) for the category multiple causes. Conclusion: In addition to classic explanations for macrocytosis, alternative causes are frequently encountered in patients with macrocytic anaemia in general practice

Zelfsturing kan niet zonder doelen en monitoring

De leden van de Vereniging ‘Noardlike Fryske Wâlden’, grotendeels melkveehouders, willen graag zelf sturen op milieudoelen in de Noordelijke Friese Wouden. Hierbij willen zij collectief op milieudoelstellingen worden afgerekend, in plaats van individueel te moeten voldoen aan generieke middelvoorschriften. Twee zaken zijn noodzakelijk voor deze vorm van zelfsturing. Ten eerste moeten er heldere doelen voor milieuprestaties en milieukwaliteit zijn waarop gestuurd kan worden. Ten tweede moet er een monitoringsysteem zijn om vast te stellen of de doelen worden gehaald. Dit artikel beschrijft de ontwikkeling van milieumonitoring om de gewenste zelfsturing mogelijk te make

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum