A Perspective on Organic Agriculture in China - Opportunities and Challenges

With the rapid development of international production and trade in organic food, organic agriculture is also boosting in China. The milestone of Chinese organic agri-culture was set in 1990 with the first export of a certified organic product (tea) from Lin’an county of Zhejiang Province, China, which marked the launch of organic pro-duction in China. By the end of 2005, there had been about 4.384 million ha organic land, including 1.694 million ha organic, 0.61 million ha conversion as well as 2.08 million ha collection area, about half of which is certified area. About 4.93 million tons organic products and nearly 1600 projects had been certified with 300~400 varieties. According to the above data, now China ranks the 3rd largest country of organic production in the world. In China, organic development mostly is export oriented, the export products include beans, rice, tea, mushroom, vegetable, processed oil and herbs, etc. According to the certifying body COFCC of Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), the value of exported organic products increased from 0.3 million USD in 1995 to 0.35 billion USD at the end of the year 2004. Chinese domestic organic market started from 2000. Presently, most of the products sold in domestic markets are certified by COFCC and OFDC in some largest cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Shenzhen, etc. The price of the organic products is often up to 3 times the price of conventional products. Average organic food consumption accounts for 0.08% of the conventional food (LI 2006)

Irish consumers' perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the "Made in China" image

The Chinese government launched the “going abroad” policy in 2001 to encourage Chinese companies to invest and create Chinese brands in international markets. However, the perceptions of Chinese brands among Western consumers have been shown to be consistently low, especially amongst European consumers. This research aims to investigate the Irish consumers’ perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the “Made in China” image. This paper also investigates consumers’ perceptions and attitudes when making purchase decisions for Chinese brands based on gender, age, and nationality. The paper provides important recommendations for Chinese companies who plan to enter the European, and more particularly, the Irish market

Zero Touch Coordinated UAV Network Formation for 360{\deg} Views of a Moving Ground Target in Remote VR Applications

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with on-board cameras are widely used for remote surveillance and video capturing applications. In remote virtual reality (VR) applications, multiple UAVs can be used to capture different partially overlapping angles of the ground target, which can be stitched together to provide 360{\deg} views. This requires coordinated formation of UAVs that is adaptive to movements of the ground target. In this paper, we propose a joint UAV formation and tracking framework to capture 360{\deg} angles of the target. The proposed framework uses a zero touch approach for automated and adaptive reconfiguration of multiple UAVs in a coordinated manner without the need for human intervention. This is suited to both military and civilian applications. Simulation results demonstrate the convergence and configuration of the UAVs with arbitrary initial locations and orientations. The performance has been tested for various number of UAVs and different mobility patterns of the ground target

Histone demethylase JMJD1C is phosphorylated by mTOR to activate de novo lipogenesis.

Fatty acid and triglyceride synthesis increases greatly in response to feeding and insulin. This lipogenic induction involves coordinate transcriptional activation of various enzymes in lipogenic pathway, including fatty acid synthase and glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase. Here, we show that JMJD1C is a specific histone demethylase for lipogenic gene transcription in liver. In response to feeding/insulin, JMJD1C is phosphorylated at T505 by mTOR complex to allow direct interaction with USF-1 for recruitment to lipogenic promoter regions. Thus, by demethylating H3K9me2, JMJD1C alters chromatin accessibility to allow transcription. Consequently, JMJD1C promotes lipogenesis in vivo to increase hepatic and plasma triglyceride levels, showing its role in metabolic adaption for activation of the lipogenic program in response to feeding/insulin, and its contribution to development of hepatosteatosis resulting in insulin resistance

The role of China for trade Liberalization and competition policy after WTO accession; National Security vs. Anti-Dumping agreement, What ailing the WTO?

The operation of World Trade Organization (WTO) remained suspended and revived several times over the past few decades. The mandate was given to World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure economic efficiency in international trade while allowing for the optimal use of world’s resources in line with the objective of sustainable development, to establish reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements in order to substantially re-duce the unjustified tariff’s and other trade frictions and abolishment of discriminatory conduct in global trade by accelerating the multilateral trading systems. For seven decades the safeguard measures in Multilateral Trading Phase (MTP) remain stagnant before being incorporated in 1994. However, alleged security instances already prevail in many other (WTO) provisions, including the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Agreement on safeguards. The excessive application of article XXI (a)(i) of GATT posing explosive trade disputes including Violative tariff’s fixed by the United States and like trade limitations inflicted by Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)challenged the statutory framework and existence of the World Trade Organization. It has raised a question that how these “parturient trade constraints” under the umbrella of security exceptions be interpreted or imposed? Either these are self-judging, binding through judicial precedent, or institutional interpretation? The members of WTO shall take this as a matter of grave concern in order to rejuvenate the escalating challenges to international trade and to reinstate the equitable competitive business atmosphere for all entrants globally. The WTO being symbolic international trade institution shall have to make speaking ruling on the scope, meaning and application of these security exceptions. The protectionist tariffs recommended by the International Trade Commission (ITC) and Commerce Department of United States are not in line with the spirit of GATT, Anti-Dumping Agreement and Agreement on Safeguards. The World Trade Organization (WTO) will have to take serious initiatives for international regulation of Anti- Dumping Measures