First record of <i>Pisanianura grimmaldi</i> (Dautzenberg, 1889) (Mollusca: Gastropoda) for Madeira

The authors give the first record of the rannelid gastropod Pisanianura grimmaldi (Dautzenberg, 1889) for Madeiran waters

A 24-Week, Randomized, Treat-to-Target Trial Comparing Initiation of Insulin Glargine Once-Daily With Insulin Detemir Twice-Daily in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Inadequately Controlled on Oral Glucose-Lowering Drugs

OBJECTIVE - To determine whether glargine is noninferior to detemir regarding the percentage of patients reaching A1C <7% without symptomatic hypoglycemia <= 3.1 mmol/l. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS - In this 24-week trial, 973 insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients on stable oral glucose-lowering drugs with A1CS. 7.0-10.5% were randomized to glargine once daily or detemir twice daily. Insulin doses were systematically titrated. RESULTS - 27.5 and 25.6% of patients reached the primary outcome with glargine and detemir, respectively, demonstrating the noninferiority of glargine. Improvements in A1C were -1.46 +/- 1.09% for glargine and -1.54 +/- 1.11% for detemir (P = 0.149), with similar proportions of patients achieving A1C <7% (P = 0.254) but more detemir-treated patients reaching A1C <6.5% (P = 0.017). Hypoglycemia risk was similar. Weight gain was higher for glargine (difference: 0.77 kg, P <0.001). Glargine doses were lower than detemir doses: 43.5 +/- 129.0 vs. 76.5 +/- 50.5 units/day (P <0.001). CONCLUSIONS - In insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients, glargine reached similar control as detemir, with more weight gain, but required significantly lower dose

Coordination Dependence of Hyperfine Fields of 5sp Impurities on Ni Surfaces

We present first-principles calculations of the magnetic hyperfine fields H of 5sp impurities on the (001), (111), and (110) surfaces of Ni. We examine the dependence of H on the coordination number by placing the impurity in the surfaces, on top of them at the adatom positions, and in the bulk. We find a strong coordination dependence of H, different and characteristic for each impurity. The behavior is explained in terms of the on-site s-p hybridization as the symmetry is reduced at the surface. Our results are in agreement with recent experimental findings.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

New records of marine invertebrates from Ascension Island (central Atlantic)

The sea anemone Telmatactis forskalii, the zoanthid Isaurus tuberculatus, the nemertine Baseodiscus delineatus, the echinoderms Ophiocoma wendtii and Mithrodia clavigera, the molluscs Colubraria canariensis, Glyphepithema turtoni, Tonna pennata, Trivia candidula, Melanella eburnea, Melanella n.sp., Echineulima leucophaes, Stylocheilus striatus, Limaria hians, Pteria hirundo and Callistoctopus macropus, and the crustaceans Tetraclitella sp., Oxynaspis celata, Thor amboinensis and Parribacus antarcticus are recorded from Ascension Island for the first time. A new depth record is given for the sea anemone Telmatactis cricoides. An undescribed shrimp species of the genus Lysmata and the shrimp Lysmata moorei were observed to clean fish at night.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The impacts of EU accession on the agriculture of the Visegrad Countries

The Visegrad Countries (VC)2 joined the European Union in 2004, which has offered several possibilities and challenges for their agriculture. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the status of the sector in the light of latest available data as well as to identify the factors lying behind different country performances. Results suggest that EU accession has had a diverse impact on the Visegrad Countries’ agriculture and member states capitalised their possibilities in a different manner, due to initial conditions and pre- and post-accession policies

Production potential in the "bread baskets" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia

© 2017 Elsevier B.V.Eastern Europe and Central Asia is a major food producer and exporter. Almost a quarter of world wheat exports come from the region, and especially from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine (RUK). The potential of these countries to become a "bread basket" for the world has been emphasized because of already large production and exports and their "immense land and yield reserves", referring to the abandonment of more than 50 million hectares of cropland and the large drop in crop productivity in the 1990s. However, there is considerable uncertainty about the potential of this land for food production. In this paper we review interdisciplinary literature and empirical evidence, predictions of production potential and impacts of climate change; and discuss the potential of the region to become a reliable breadbasket of the world. From a biophysical (crop growth) perspective, under different scenarios of increased yields, land use and climate change effects, RUK could produce an additional 40-110 million tons of wheat compared to current production, which would be a substantial additional production. However economic incentives, in particular the evolution of food prices and competition from other crops, are likely to significantly constrain these potentials. In addition, the introduction of export restrictions during recent times of high prices raised concerns on the reliability of RUK as exporters

Report on the IDRC 2012 Canadian Learning Forum : Virtual Platforms, Knowledge Management and International Development, February 7-8, 2012, Winnipeg

French version available in IDRC Digital Library: Rapport sur le Forum canadien d'apprentissage du CRDI 2012 : plateformes virtuelles, gestion des connaissances et développement international, Winnipeg, les 7 et 8 février 2012Over the past five years, the Canadian Partnerships (CP) program at IDRC has supported a number of Canadian academic, research and civil society organizations to use online virtual platforms (VPs) in their research, policy development, project collaboration, capacity building and dissemination activities. VPs are online tools and systems that are designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, management and collaboration amongst geographically dispersed actors. International development organizations increasingly see these VPs as a means to connecting far-flung staff, partners, participants and supporters to document, compile and make sense of their collective learning to enhance real-world, “off-line results”. Moreover, for organizations that work globally, VPs also offer the advantage of reducing the costs, inconvenience and pollution associated with international travel; and as more and more people in the global South are connecting to the Internet via mobile phones, the potential to reach new constituencies and to support collaboration between local, national and international actors is exciting, but also potentially overwhelming for staff charged with starting up and facilitating the use of these platforms..

Food Price Shocks and the Political Economy of Global Agricultural and Development Policy

The recent spikes of global food prices induced a rapid increase in mass media coverage, public policy attention, and donor funding for food security and for agriculture and rural poverty. This has occurred while the shift from low to high food prices has induced a shift in (demographic or social) location of the hunger and poverty effects, but the total number of undernourished and poor people has declined over the same period. We suggest that the observed pattern can be explained by the presence of a global urban bias on agriculture and food policy in developing countries, and we discuss whether this global urban bias may actually benefit poor farmers. We argue that the food price spikes have succeeded where others have failed in the past: to move the problems of poor and hungry farmers to the top of the policy agenda and to induce development and donor strategies to help them

Production potential in the “bread baskets” of Eastern Europe and Central Asia

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Eastern Europe and Central Asia is a major food producer and exporter. Almost a quarter of world wheat exports come from the region, and especially from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine (RUK). The potential of these countries to become a “bread basket” for the world has been emphasized because of already large production and exports and their “immense land and yield reserves”, referring to the abandonment of more than 50 million hectares of cropland and the large drop in crop productivity in the 1990s. However, there is considerable uncertainty about the potential of this land for food production. In this paper we review interdisciplinary literature and empirical evidence, predictions of production potential and impacts of climate change; and discuss the potential of the region to become a reliable breadbasket of the world. From a biophysical (crop growth) perspective, under different scenarios of increased yields, land use and climate change effects, RUK could produce an additional 40–110 million tons of wheat compared to current production, which would be a substantial additional production. However economic incentives, in particular the evolution of food prices and competition from other crops, are likely to significantly constrain these potentials. In addition, the introduction of export restrictions during recent times of high prices raised concerns on the reliability of RUK as exporters

Globalization's effects on world agricultural trade, 1960–2050

Recent globalization has been characterized by a decline in the costs of cross-border trade in farm and other products. It has been driven primarily by the information and communication technology revolution and—in the case of farm products—by reductions in governmental distortions to agricultural production, consumption and trade. Both have boosted economic growth and reduced poverty globally, especially in Asia. The first but maybe not the second of these drivers will continue in coming decades. World food prices will depend also on whether (and if so by how much) farm productivity growth continues to outpace demand growth and to what extent diets in emerging economies move towards livestock and horticultural products at the expense of staples. Demand in turn will be driven not only by population and income growth, but also by crude oil prices if they remain at current historically high levels, since that will affect biofuel demand. Climate change mitigation policies and adaptation, water market developments and market access standards particularly for transgenic foods will add to future production, price and trade uncertainties