Linking Research and Policy: Assessing a Framework for Organic Agricultural Support in Ireland

This paper links social science research and agricultural policy through an analysis of support for organic agriculture and food. Globally, sales of organic food have experienced 20% annual increases for the past two decades, and represent the fastest growing segment of the grocery market. Although consumer interest has increased, farmers are not keeping up with demand. This is partly due to a lack of political support provided to farmers in their transition from conventional to organic production. Support policies vary by country and in some nations, such as the US, vary by state/province. There have been few attempts to document the types of support currently in place. This research draws on an existing Framework tool to investigate regionally specific and relevant policy support available to organic farmers in Ireland. This exploratory study develops a case study of Ireland within the framework of ten key categories of organic agricultural support: leadership, policy, research, technical support, financial support, marketing and promotion, education and information, consumer issues, inter-agency activities, and future developments. Data from the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc), and other governmental and semi-governmental agencies provide the basis for an assessment of support in each category. Assessments are based on the number of activities, availability of information to farmers, and attention from governmental personnel for each of the ten categories. This policy framework is a valuable tool for farmers, researchers, state agencies, and citizen groups seeking to document existing types of organic agricultural support and discover policy areas which deserve more attention

mSpace meets EPrints: a Case Study in Creating Dynamic Digital Collections

In this case study we look at issues involved in (a) generating dynamic digital libraries that are on a particular topic but span heterogeneous collections at distinct sites, (b) supplementing the artefacts in that collection with additional information available either from databases at the artefact's home or from the Web at large, and (c) providing an interaction paradigm that will support effective exploration of this new resource. We describe how we used two available frameworks, mSpace and EPrints to support this kind of collection building. The result of the study is a set of recommendations to improve the connectivity of remote resources both to one another and to related Web resources, and that will also reduce problems like co-referencing in order to enable the creation of new collections on demand

High Altitude Ozone Research Balloon

In order to create a mission model of the high altitude ozone research balloon (HAORB) several options for flight preparation, altitude control, flight termination, and payload recovery were considered. After the optimal launch date and location for two separate HAORB flights were calculated, a method for reducing the heat transfer from solar and infrared radiation was designed and analytically tested. This provided the most important advantage of the HAORB over conventional balloons, i.e., its improved flight duration. Comparisons of different parachute configurations were made, and a design best suited for the HAORB's needs was determined to provide for payload recovery after flight termination. In an effort to avoid possible payload damage, a landing system was also developed

Communicative Challenges in the Parent-Teacher Relationship Regarding Students with Special Needs

The current study explored the communicative challenges for parents and teachers of children with special needs. This qualitative study elicited interview data from both parents and teachers, and revealed that teachers were frustrated with parents not communicating regarding their special needs children in a way that could help prepare the teachers for the challenges they may face. Caregivers cited a lack of communication with teachers as problematic, as well as their perception of teacher as expert that led them to feel as if the teachers presented information in inaccessible ways. The findings are discussed through the lens of structuration theory

Anti-cyberlaundering regulation and control

Magister Legum - LLMThis paper is inspired by the ills borne out of the internet. The internet has become a modern day tool for criminals seeking to conceal the proceeds derived from their crime, hence the problematic notion of cyberlaundering. This paper journeys through the world of cyberlaundering by looking into the structure of the crime in great depth. It explores various possibilities, and tries to hatch out viable solutions to the dilemma.South Afric

Computability, inference and modeling in probabilistic programming

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-144).We investigate the class of computable probability distributions and explore the fundamental limitations of using this class to describe and compute conditional distributions. In addition to proving the existence of noncomputable conditional distributions, and thus ruling out the possibility of generic probabilistic inference algorithms (even inefficient ones), we highlight some positive results showing that posterior inference is possible in the presence of additional structure like exchangeability and noise, both of which are common in Bayesian hierarchical modeling. This theoretical work bears on the development of probabilistic programming languages (which enable the specification of complex probabilistic models) and their implementations (which can be used to perform Bayesian reasoning). The probabilistic programming approach is particularly well suited for defining infinite-dimensional, recursively-defined stochastic processes of the sort used in nonparametric Bayesian statistics. We present a new construction of the Mondrian process as a partition-valued Markov process in continuous time, which can be viewed as placing a distribution on an infinite kd-tree data structure.by Daniel M. Roy.Ph.D

A Preliminary Investigation towards the Risk Stratification of Allogeneic Stem Cell Recipients with Respect to the Potential for Development of GVHD via Their Pre-Transplant Plasma Lipid and Metabolic Signature

The clinical outcome of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT) may be influenced by the metabolic status of the recipient following conditioning, which in turn may enable risk stratification with respect to the development of transplant-associated complications such as graft vs. host disease (GVHD). To better understand the impact of the metabolic profile of transplant recipients on post-transplant alloreactivity, we investigated the metabolic signature of 14 patients undergoing myeloablative conditioning followed by either human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched related or unrelated donor SCT, or autologous SCT. Blood samples were taken following conditioning and prior to transplant on day 0 and the plasma was comprehensively characterized with respect to its lipidome and metabolome via liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LCMS) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GCMS). A pro-inflammatory metabolic profile was observed in patients who eventually developed GVHD. Five potential pre-transplant biomarkers, 2-aminobutyric acid, 1-monopalmitin, diacylglycerols (DG 38:5, DG 38:6), and fatty acid FA 20:1 demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity towards predicting post-transplant GVHD. The resulting predictive model demonstrated an estimated predictive accuracy of risk stratification of 100%, with area under the curve of the ROC of 0.995. The likelihood ratio of 1-monopalmitin (infinity), DG 38:5 (6.0), and DG 38:6 (6.0) also demonstrated that a patient with a positive test result for these biomarkers following conditioning and prior to transplant will be at risk of developing GVHD. Collectively, the data suggest the possibility that pre-transplant metabolic signature may be used for risk stratification of SCT recipients with respect to development of alloreactivity