Agricultural Risk Management - Experiences from an Action Research Approach

A new model for risk management in agriculture is described in the paper. The risk model is constructed as a context dependent process, which includes four main phases. The model is aimed at agricultural advisors, who wish to facilitate and disseminate risk management to farmers. It is developed and tested by an action research approach in an attempt to make risk management more applicable on family farms. Our obtained experiences indicate that farmers don't apply probabilistic thinking and other concepts according to formal decision theory.Risk management, consulting, action research, farm families, Risk and Uncertainty,

Økologi og kompleksitet i de daglige madindkøb

I DETTE KAPITEL undersøger vi, hvordan forbrugerne håndterer økologi og madindkøb i hverdagen. Hvordan passer det at købe økologisk ind i den række af forskellige hensyn, som er på spil i hverdagens madindkøb, og hvordan forholder forbrugerne sig til madindkøbene og de mange hensyn i praksis? Kapitlet bygger på resultaterne af to kvalitative undersøgelser. Fokus er dels på forbrugeres strategier til at håndtere spørgsmålet om køb eller ikke-køb af økologi i forhold til den mængde af ofte modstridende kriterier for gode madindkøb, de opererer med. Dels er fokus på betydningen af rutiner og ’nemme’ løsninger i lyset af de krav, det moderne hverdagsliv stiller til forbrugerne. I kapitlet understreges madindkøbenes og hverdagslivets kompleksitet og forbrugernes behov for at reducere kompleksiteten. På den baggrund argumenteres for, at tiltag til at fremme det økologiske forbrug må bidrage til at gøre økologisk forbrug ’nemmere’, ikke mere komplekst. Det indebærer et fokus på at gøre det lettere i praksis at forene økologi med de mange forskellige kriterier for gode madindkøb, som er i spil, frem for et mere snævert fokus på at informere om økologi og fødevareproduktion

Pharmaceutical-grade albumin: impaired drug-binding capacity in vitro

BACKGROUND: Albumin is the most abundant protein in blood plasma, and due to its ligand binding properties, serves as a circulating depot for endogenous and exogenous (e.g. drugs) compounds. Hence, the unbound drug is the pharmacologically active drug. Commercial human albumin preparations are frequently used during surgery and in critically ill patients. Recent studies have indicated that the use of pharmaceutical-grade albumin is controversial in critically ill patients. In this in vitro study we investigated the drug binding properties of pharmaceutical-grade albumins (Baxter/Immuno, Octapharma, and Pharmacia & Upjohn), native human serum, and commercially available human serum albumin from Sigma Chemical Company. METHODS: The binding properties of the various albumin solutions were tested in vitro by means of ultrafiltration. Naproxen, warfarin, and digitoxin were used as ligands. HPLC was used to quantitate the total and free drug concentrations. The data were fitted to a model of two classes of binding sites for naproxen and warfarin and one class for digitoxin, using Microsoft Excel and Graphpad Prism. RESULTS: The drugs were highly bound to albumin (95–99.5%). The highest affinity (lowest K(1)) was found with naproxen. Pharmaceutical-grade albumin solutions displayed significantly lower drug-binding capacity compared to native human serum and Sigma albumin. Thus, the free fraction was considerably higher, approximately 40 times for naproxen and 5 and 2 times for warfarin and digitoxin, respectively. The stabilisers caprylic acid and N-acetyl-DL-tryptophan used in the manufacturing procedure seem to be of importance. Adding the stabilisers to human serum and Sigma albumin reduced the binding affinity whereas charcoal treatment of the pharmaceutical-grade albumin from Octapharma almost restored the specific binding capacity. CONCLUSION: This in vitro study demonstrates that the specific binding for warfarin and digitoxin is significantly reduced and for naproxen no longer detectable in pharmaceutical-grade albumin. It further shows that the addition of stabilisers may be of major importance for this effect

Social Policy in the EU — Reform Barometer 2016. Bertelsmann Stiftung Social Inclusion Monitor Europe

The Social Inclusion Monitor Europe (SIM Europe) project invited social policy experts from across Europe to participate in the Reform Barometer 2016 survey and assess the reform need, activity and quality with respect to 55 policy objectives in the 28 member states of the European Union between July 2014 and January 2016. This report presents the analysis of the replies from over 1,000 survey participants in five dimensions: Poverty Prevention, Equitable Education, Labour Market Access, Social Cohesion and Non-discrimination, and Health.1 For each member state, the experts’ quantitative assessments have been aggregated to different levels of analysis, yielding a reform need score, an activity rate and a quality score at the levels of policy objectives and of dimensions as well as at the overall level. In addition, the reform performance score is a composite measure that captures each member state’s reform activity and quality using a single number. In what follows, we present a summary of the key findings

A Compensatory Liability Regime to Promote the Exchange of Microbial Genetic Resources for Research and Benefit Sharing

Female rhesus macaques were immunized with HIV virus-like particles (HIV-VLPs) or HIV DNA administered as sequential combinations of mucosal (intranasal) and systemic (intramuscular) routes, according to homologous or heterologous prime-boost schedules. The results show that in rhesus macaques only the sequential intranasal and intramuscular administration of HIV-VLPs, and not the intranasal alone, is able to elicit humoral immune response at the systemic as well as the vaginal level.funding agencies|Simian Vaccine Evaluation Unit (SVEU) of the Division of AIDS||European Community|201433|</p

Applicability of Confocal Raman Microscopy to Observe Microstructural Modifications of Cream Cheeses as Influenced by Freezing

Confocal Raman microscopy is a promising technique to derive information about microstructure, with minimal sample disruption. Raman emission bands are highly specific to molecular structure and with Raman spectroscopy it is thus possible to observe different classes of molecules in situ, in complex food matrices, without employing fluorescent dyes. In this work confocal Raman microscopy was employed to observe microstructural changes occurring after freezing and thawing in high-moisture cheeses, and the observations were compared to those obtained with confocal laser scanning microscopy. Two commercially available cream cheese products were imaged with both microscopy techniques. The lower resolution (1 µm/pixel) of confocal Raman microscopy prevented the observation of particles smaller than 1 µm that may be part of the structure (e.g., sugars). With confocal Raman microscopy it was possible to identify and map the large water domains formed during freezing and thawing in high-moisture cream cheese. The results were supported also by low resolution NMR analysis. NMR and Raman microscopy are complementary techniques that can be employed to distinguish between the two different commercial formulations, and different destabilization levels