AGRICULTURE AS A MANAGED ECOSYSTEM: POLICY IMPLICATIONS

One of the greatest challenges facing agriculture for the foreseeable future is to resolve conflicts caused by a growing competition for the services of the soil, water, and other natural resources on which agriculture depends-driven by growing demands for food, fiber, and for nonagricultural services these resources provide. To meet this challenge, research is needed which is integrated across the relevant sciences to better understand and predict the properties of agricultural production systems in all of the dimensions that have come to be represented by the concept of sustainability. If we were to achieve this capability to analyze agriculture as a managed ecosystem, it would be possible to move beyond the current regime of agricultural policies, driven largely by interest-group politics, toward science-based policies that recognize the tradeoffs associated with competing uses of natural resources.Environmental Economics and Policy,

ECONOMETRIC-PROCESS MODELS FOR INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

This paper develops the conceptual and empirical basis for a class of empirical economic production models that can be linked to site-specific bio-physical models for use in integrated assessment research. Site-specific data are used to estimate econometric production models, and these data and models are then incorporated into a simulation model that represents the decision making process of the farmer as a sequence of discrete or continuous land use and input use decisions. This discrete/continuous structure of the econometric process model is able to simulate decision making both within and outside the range of observed data in a way that is consistent with economic theory and with site-specific bio-physical constraints and processes. An econometric-process model of the dryland grain production system of the Northern Plains demonstrates the capabilities of this type of model.bio-physical models, integrated assessment, production models, dryland grain production, econometric-process models, Production Economics, C5, Q1, Q2,

EVALUATING TELEMEDICINE IN RURAL SETTINGS: ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS

Changes in health care policies, demographics, and technology have presented new opportunities for the delivery of medical care services and information to rural communities. Telemedicinethe use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distances separates the participantsis one technology that has impacted the efficiency of delivery of rural health care services. This paper presents an overview of the telemedicine technologies, government involvement in support of telemedicine, evaluation efforts to date for these technologies, and issues that need to be addressed in designing an economic-based framework to evaluate the net benefits of telemedicine technologies to rural communities and consumers. An evaluation framework needs to be capable of quantifying the tradeoffs among access to health care services, the costs of delivery of a given level of services, and changes in the quality of the service that is being delivered via electronic communications; and how these tradeoffs shift as the level of telemedicine and the technology changes. The framework that is proposed is based on models of consumer behavior that incorporate discrete choices among quality differentiated sites.rural health care, telemedicine, averted costs, economic benefits, telecommunications technology, R0, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Health Economics and Policy, I1,

EVALUATING TELEMEDICINE TECHNOLOGIES IN RURAL SETTINGS

Changes in health care policies, demographics, and technology have presented new opportunities for the delivery of medical care services and information to rural communities. Telemedicinethe use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participantshas significantly impacted the delivery of rural health care services. This paper presents an overview of the telemedicine technologies, government involvement in support of telemedicine, and issues that need to be addressed in designing an economic framework to evaluate the net benefits of telemedicine to rural communities and consumers. Federal and state governments have invested millions of support dollars in the form of equipment, infrastructure, and incentives for consumers and providers to expand the use of telecommunications in medical care. Since disbursement of these funds is already underway, it only makes sense to develop a method to determine both where and whether an additional dollar of funding for telemedicine development would be of the greatest benefit to society. If telemedicine can prove itself as a useful method for improving the likelihood of survival of rural hospitals, then, in the interest of rural development, it may be a technology worth investing in; i.e., the social benefits, measured as the sum of the private and public benefits, may outweigh the costs. According to its supporters, telemedicine systems have the potential to simultaneously address several problems characteristic of health care in rural areas, including access to care, cost containment, and quality assurance. Access can be improved by linking providers in remote areas with specialists in metropolitan centers or peers in rural areas. Telemedicine not only enables a wider range of services to be offered in the local community but may have the added effect of improving physician retention in isolated areas, one of the primary challenges in maintaining access for frontier medical centers. Telemedicine can promote cost containment through the substitution of lower-cost rural providers and facilities. Ideally, improved quality will be achieved by the ready availability of consultations and referrals. These are the potential benefits of telemedicine implementation, but they have not yet been verified by research in a field setting. An evaluation framework for telemedicine needs to be capable of modeling changes in the behavior of health care consumers (i.e., altered visitation patterns), recognizing differences in quality of service, and finally, quantifying the value of these changes. This is no small task, and obtaining the required data will likely require the cooperation of many parties, including health care providers, patients, hospital and program administrators, and policymakers. These are the same groups that could benefit greatly from a better understanding of how telemedicine technologies affect health care delivery, but a meaningful framework for analysis needs to capture the many aspects of telemedicine implementation.rural health care, telemedicine, averted costs, economic benefits, telecommunications technology, R0, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Health Economics and Policy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, I1,

Il caso Assange davanti al Gruppo di lavoro sulla detenzione arbitraria delle Nazioni Unite: un parere controverso su una vicenda kafkiana

Il caso Assange viene analizzato alla luce del parere del Gruppo di lavoro delle Nazioni Unite sulla detenzione arbitraria mettendo in luce le criticità e le omissioni della controversa ed annosa vicenda che non riesce a trovare soluzione

PHYSICAL AND ECONOMIC MODEL INTEGRATION FOR MEASUREMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMICAL USE

Environmental Economics and Policy,

Commentary: Rab GTPase: A New Mitotic Delivery Service.

Mitosis is a crucial event that controls the equal partitioning of the genetic information between the two daughter cells. Failure in this process can cause various human genetic diseases and can contribute to cancer onset and development. For many years cell division studies focused on the identification and analysis of the mechanisms and signalling pathways that control microtubule dynamics and chromosome behaviour, however in recent years other important cellular and regulatory processes have been implicated in various aspects of cell division and our traditional view of mitosis has changed. In particular several studies have highlighted the importance of membranes (Civelekoglu-Scholey et al., 2010; Poirier et al., 2010; Schweizer et al., 2014; Zheng, 2010) and membrane trafficking proteins (Liu and Zheng, 2009; Royle et al., 2005) during mitosis and revealed that many proteins known for their function in membrane trafficking in interphase have also a role during the mitotic process. In 2011 two papers reported a new role for the small GTPase Rab5 during mitosis and that this new function had been conserved through evolution (Capalbo et al., 2011; Serio et al., 2011). These papers found an unexpected new regulatory role for Rab5 GTPase in mitotic progression and regulation of membrane dynamics during nuclear envelope breakdown both in Drosophila melanogaster and human cells. They also reported that Rab5 is required for the correct alignment of chromosomes at the metaphase plate, an important step for the proper segregation of chromosomes.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2015.0007

La Corte internazionale di giustizia e il risarcimento del danno ambientale

The article aims to analyze the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the case Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the border area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) released on 2 February 2018. The decision was a landmark in the jurisprudence of the ICJ, from the one hand, because the ICJ has recognized that environmental damage is compensable under international law; and from the other hand, because for the first time ever it has provided a monetary compensation for environmental damage, claimed in the case at hand by Costa Rica in response to the wrongful activity carried out by Nicaragua in the border area of Isla Portillos. The ICJ basically has accepted the claim of Costa Rica for a compensation, but has reduced consistently the amount required taking into account that the compensation has been awarded in absence of a causal nexus between Nicaragua's wrongful activities and injuries suffered by Costa Rica. The Court has been inaugurated, in the author's opinion, a new approach in determining the amount of an environmental damage, prioritizing in so doing the protection of the environment instead of a conventional rule of judging a claim for compensation

La spesa militare mondiale nel 2014

Analisi della spesa militare mondiale nel 2014 alla luce della pubblicazione del Rapporto SIPR

Extraordinary (Circumstances) Injustice

(Excerpt) The box . . . . It’s a small room, so you really don’t move around a lot. You wake up, and there’s a toilet right next to your head. You look out the window and you see birds fly-ing, and that only leads your mind into wanting freedom more. And since it’s a small room, it makes you think cra-zy. . . .Right now, I’m five-foot-seven. I grew. I came herewhen I was five feet tall. This is Rikers Island. The 19-year-old boy who shared his story is certainly not alone. Thousands of youth from throughout New York State grew up incarcerated on Rikers Island, which is among the “world’s worst” correctional facilities. Since its historic opening in the 1930s, the facility has been plagued by “drug use, corrupt correction officers, violence, squalor, [and] gang consolidation.” Yet, it is the same place that New York has allowed children to call their home for the last several decades. In 2015, Governor Andrew Cuomo raised awareness for the significant problem of treating “troubled kids” as adults and declared, in his Raise the Age campaign, that the minimum age for criminal responsibility “must change.” In 2017, the New York Legislature raised the age of criminal responsibility from sixteen years old to eighteen years old but left a substantial loophole. The phrase “extraordinary circumstances” within its Raise the Age (“RTA”) legislation provides this gray area, as the statute reads, “[t]he court shall deny the motion to prevent removal of the action in [the] youth part unless the court makes a determination upon such motion by the district attorney that extraordinary circumstances exist that should prevent the transfer of the action to family court.” Since the Legislature failed to define what factors to examine or specify crimes that constitute such a finding, the phrase has been applied both broadly and arbitrarily. With little guidance, courts have examined factors such as prior juvenile history—in violation of the Family Court Act—as well as culpability—at odds with the presumption of innocence. Moreover, some courts have used mental illness as a way to entirely mitigate a finding of extraordinary circumstances, perhaps believing the juvenile justice system is more equipped to handle mental illness. Part I of this Note will provide an overview of the history of the juvenile justice system using a four-wave approach, as categorized by the National Campaign to Reform State Juvenile Justice Systems. It will focus on New York specifically as it pertains to the fourth, and current, wave of reform. Part II will outline the problems caused by the Legislature’s failure to define “extraordinary circumstances.” It will detail the ways in which courts have struggled to determine factors to examine and how to use those factors, specifically focusing on prior juvenile history, culpability, and mental illness. Lastly, Part III will explore the possibilities for change through the lens of Connecticut and Pennsylvania’s RTA statutes, suggesting a set of appropriate factors to examine when deciding if extraordinary circumstances exist. Further, it will explore new ways to approach mental illness among alleged youthful offenders and suggest blended sentencing laws as a way to mitigate various problems associated with a preliminary assessment of culpability