Agricultural Risk Management in the European Union and in the USA

Risk management has become increasingly important in virtually all aspects of the economy, including agriculture. Every country that considers agriculture a strategically important economic sector strives for effective risk management in agriculture. In our study American and European Union farmers’ risk management practices were, based on various surveys, compared. In terms of agricultural risk management, major differences between the USA and the EU were evident, and these derive from different farming cultures, differences in historical evolution, and economic philosophy. This study provides an overview regarding the important similarities and dissimilarities.agriculture, risk management, risk perception, EU, USA, surveys., Farm Management, Risk and Uncertainty,

FARMERS’ RISK PERCEPTION AND RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

The local, regional and global economic and natural phenomena of previous decades collectively emphasize the growing importance of risk factors affecting agricultural production both directly and indirectly. Agricultural producers should not restrict their risk management strategies to offset and relieve the problems caused by climatic and natural phenomena, but the knowledge of up-to-date professional, market, and agricultural policy developments is more and more an indispensable condition of successful farming. Besides what mentioned above, it is at least equally important to answer the question of how farmers perceive the importance of risk factors surrounding their activities, as it strongly influences the shaping of their risk management strategies. The responsibility of professional organizations and policy makers is easily shapeable in this sense because they may play an important role in the orientation and education of farmers, thus making it possible that farmers judge the importance of risk factors properly so they may work out adequate risk management strategies. The European Union has long been aware of the importance of the topic and makes great efforts to investigate the possibilities of an EU level risk management system. The “Design and economic impact of risk management tools for European agriculture” research project1 conducted under the aegis of the Sixth Framework Programme fits that objective. Within the project the authors of this paper explored the risk perception and applied risk management strategies of farmers in selected EU Member States.risk perception, risk management, international comparison, Farm Management, Risk and Uncertainty,

Thermal Enhancement of Cellular Radiation Damage: A Review of Complementary and Synergistic Effects

Hyperthermia treatment can kill mammalian cells in a time and temperature dependent manner. Thermal sensitivity varies extensively among various cell lines in culture and cellular molecular and ultrastructural studies have not resolved which cellular mechanisms underlie thermal cell killing and radiosensitization. The response of cells to heat and radiation are complementary under certain conditions found in human tumors, such as hypoxia, low pH, low nutrient and the S-phase of the cell cycle. Thus, hyperthermia can be used as a complementary treatment modality in the radiotherapy of human cancer. Further studies show that heat treatment causes radiosensitization which is in part associated with the inhibition of repair of radiation damage and is strongly dependent on temperature and on the sequencing. In addition, the conditions such as pH and oxygenation during treatment sequencing can influence the degree of recovery of cells. These factors may be exploited in optimizing therapeutic gain in clinical cancer therapy. Data are shown that transformation from the normal to the tumorigenic state causes random small changes in radiosensitivity and heat sensitivity. Also, treatments combining heat and radiation can lead to increased or decreased transformation in cells depending on the treatment sequence

Morphological Effects of Lonidamine on Two Human-Tumor Cell Culture Lines

Lonidamine, 1-(2-4-dichlorobenzyl)-1-H-indazol-3-carboxylic acid. is an anticancer drug that has its primary action on cellular metabolism rather than cell division. Since lonidamine is not effective in all tumor cells, we have tested it in two human-tumor cell culture lines: MOLT-4, a T-leukemia and U-87 MG. a glioma. Lonidamine exposure of MOLT-4 cells at 50 μg/mL and pH 6.7 disrupted the mitochondria within 1 h of treatment. The mitochondria were swollen and the cristae were disrupted. When the treated cells were re-incubated in fresh medium at pH 7.4 the mitochondria rapidly returned to their normal morphology. The U-87 MG glioma cells did not show ultrastructural disruption after 1-h treatment with lonidamine at concentrations up to 200 μg/mL at pH 6.7 In the concentration range of 25 μg/mL to 200 μg/mL. lonidamine did not produce any cell killing in MOLT-4 after a 1-h exposure at pH 7.4, although the drug had some limited effectiveness at pH 6.7. Compared to sham-treated controls, long exposures to 100 μg/mL of lonidamine at pH 6.7 reduced survival in MOLT-4 to 92% and 53% after 6-h and 24-h exposures, respectively. Survival of U-87 MG glioma cells was also strongly pH dependent, a 2-h exposure to 50 μg/mL lonidamine at pH 7.4 did not cause cell death; however, survival dropped to 84% of the control at pH 6.65

Parental behavior and reproductive output in male-only cared and female-only cared clutches in the Eurasian Penduline Tit (<i>Remiz pendulinus</i>)

Diverse patterns of parental care, including uniparental care by either the male or the female, provide excellent opportunities to investigate how variation in social traits is maintained in wild populations. Coexistence of different parental strategies within the same population is expected when they exhibit similar cost-benefit ratios. We investigated one of the most diverse avian breeding systems and compared parental behavior and reproductive output between nests that are uniparentally cared for by male or female Eurasian Penduline Tits (Remiz pendulinus). In this small passerine bird, full care (incubation and brood care) is provided by the male only (7-18% of nests) or the female only (48-65% of nests). Additionally, a third of all nests are deserted by both parents as a result of intense sexual conflict over care. We show that parental effort is similar between male and female parents, and they achieve similar offspring survival after controlling for clutch-size differences. Females care for larger clutches than males (5.7 +/- 0.1 [SE] and 3.5 +/- 0.2 eggs, respectively), and they produce more nestlings (3.6 +/- 0.2 and 2.4 +/- 0.3 nestlings, respectively), although this difference is not significant at fledging of the chicks (3.1 +/- 0.2 and 2.4 +/- 0.3 young, respectively). Therefore, sex difference in care does not explain the bias toward female-only care in Eurasian Penduline Tits. We propose that the differential benefits of desertion and/or the differential costs of care for males and females facilitate the existence of both uniparental care types in the population. Received 18 April 2012, accepted 2 July 2012

Combining multiple classifications of chemical structures using consensus clustering

Consensus clustering involves combining multiple clusterings of the same set of objects to achieve a single clustering that will, hopefully, provide a better picture of the groupings that are present in a dataset. This Letter reports the use of consensus clustering methods on sets of chemical compounds represented by 2D fingerprints. Experiments with DUD, IDAlert, MDDR and MUV data suggests that consensus methods are unlikely to result in significant improvements in clustering effectiveness as compared to the use of a single clustering method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Three is the magic number -- distance measurement of NGC 3147 using SN 2021hpr and its siblings

The nearby spiral galaxy NGC 3147 hosted three Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the past decades, which have been subjects of intense follow-up observations. Simultaneous analysis of their data provides a unique opportunity for testing the different light curve fitting methods and distance estimations. The detailed optical follow-up of SN 2021hpr allows us to revise the previous distance estimations to NGC 3147, and compare the widely used light curve fitting algorithms to each other. After the combination of the available and newly published data of SN 2021hpr, its physical properties can be also estimated with higher accuracy. We present and analyse new BVgriz and Swift photometry of SN 2021hpr to constrain its general physical properties. Together with its siblings, SNe 1997bq and 2008fv, we cross-compare the individual distance estimates of these three SNe given by the SALT code, and also check their consistency with the results from the MLCS2k2 method. The early spectral series of SN 2021hpr are also fit with the radiative spectral code TARDIS in order to verify the explosion properties and constrain the chemical distribution of the outer ejecta. After combining the distance estimates for the three SNe, the mean distance to their host galaxy, NGC 3127, is 42.5 $\pm$ 1.0 Mpc, which matches with the distance inferred by the most up-to-date LC fitters, SALT3 and BayeSN. We confirm that SN~2021hpr is a Branch-normal Type Ia SN that ejected $\sim 1.12 \pm 0.28$ M$_\odot$ from its progenitor white dwarf, and synthesized $\sim 0.44 \pm 0.14$ M$_\odot$ of radioactive $^{56}$Ni.Comment: 16 pages, 17 figures, 11 tables; accepted for publication in A&