The Effects of Agricultural Trade Liberalisation under the Doha Development Agenda with Special Reference to the Asia Pacific Region: A Brief Survey

The main purpose of this paper is to survey the results of recent quantitative studies on the effects of Agricultural Trade Liberalization with special reference to the Asia-Pacific region under the July Framework Agreement or the “July Package” of the Doha Development Agenda, DDA (the decision adopted by the General Council of the WTO on 1 August 2004, see WTO, 2004, WT/L/579).Agricultural Trade Liberalization, Doha Development

Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Sri Lanka

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Studies in Trade and Investment - AGRICULTURAL TRADE - PLANTING THE SEEDS OF REGIONAL LIBERALIZATION IN ASIA

this chapter attempts to evaluate the impact of agricultural trade reform in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on RTAs.Agricultural trade liberalization, Asia-Pacific region, preferential trade agreements

The Kato square root problem on vector bundles with generalised bounded geometry

We consider smooth, complete Riemannian manifolds which are exponentially locally doubling. Under a uniform Ricci curvature bound and a uniform lower bound on injectivity radius, we prove a Kato square root estimate for certain coercive operators over the bundle of finite rank tensors. These results are obtained as a special case of similar estimates on smooth vector bundles satisfying a criterion which we call generalised bounded geometry. We prove this by establishing quadratic estimates for perturbations of Dirac type operators on such bundles under an appropriate set of assumptions.Comment: Slight technical modification of the notion of "GBG constant section" on page 7, and a few technical modifications to Proposition 8.4, 8.6, 8.

The Inception of the Film Adaptations Based on the Novels, in the Sri Lankan Cinema

Filmmakers often pursue other source materials to discover inspiration for their narratives and create feature filmmaking in an important way on true events and fictional stories. A film adaptation is a cinematic work, adapted from a work of fiction or nonfiction. Common fiction source materials include novels, short stories, stage plays, radio plays, television series, comics, or video games, while nonfiction sources are memoirs, biographies, or works of journalism. International filmmaking regularly uses an existing work of art as inspiration for their art, and the Film Awards even have an entire screenwriting category devoted to film adaptations such as Best Adapted Screenplay Award. In Sri Lanka, the film adaptation has been practiced for seven decades to date, and its inception is marked in 1953 with the film ‘Kela Handa’ alias "The Wild Moon" based on the novel of the same name first published in 1933. There are 10 film adaptations from 1953 to 1959 and seems ‘Kela Handa’ has created a trend-setting introduction. Where Sri Lankan Cinema has a span of 1350 locally produced films released since 1947 to date, the film adaptations are over 100 in the list. ‘Kela Handa’ adapts the best-selling novel of the same name and reflects the interplay between the two mediums, without compromising the prominent egos of the Sri Lankan first filmmaker and the Sri Lankan best-selling novelist. DOI: http://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v08i02.0

Measuring and reporting of intellectual capital: with special reference to commercial banks in Sri Lanka

Importance and growing pressure from shareholders on Intellectual Capital (IC) have been increased over the past decades since managing, measuring and reporting oflC is becoming recognized as an important strategy for transparency and more complete information on the potential profitability and growth of organizations in competitive environment. However, Sri Uinkan companies still give little importance for the measuring and reporting of IC. Thus, the objective of this study is to develop a measuring and reporting framework for IC in Sri Utnkan contexts. This study is conducted over five limited liability commercial banking companies currently operating in Sri Lanka. Study found that measuring and reporting framework for IC was developed in western countries could be applied in Sri Lankan contexts with required adjustments based on stakeholders' prospective and available information

Analysis The Potentials and Barriers of Applying Flexible Ridesharing Method in Southern Expressway in Sri Lanka

The ridesharing arrangement means the transportation of persons in a motor vehicle when such transportation is incidental to the principal purpose of the driver, which is to reach a destination and not to transport person for profit. Internet based ridesharing is the method that allows individuals in need of transportation to access a pool of drivers through a mobile app. The research aim is to find out the potential of applying internet based ridesharing in Sri Lanka under three main objectives; to ascertain the problems of the current transportation system available in Southern Expressway, to analyze the commuters’ perception towards the internet-based ridesharing concept and to examine the potential barriers and constraints of application of internet based the ridesharing system in Southern Expressway. Accordingly, data is collected using three samples representing 30 commuters from each group; the public bus users, personal vehicle users, and arranged hired vehicle users who are frequent commuters of the Southern Expressway. According to the research findings, the majority (90%) of the commuters use Southern Expressway to travel their work place and perceive travel cost as fair cost in contrast to time. The majority of the commuters’ view is the availability of buses in Southern Expressway is not at a satisfactory level. More than 90% said Southern Expressway is much comfortable to travel. The majority of the commuters (85%) willing to use the ridesharing if it is available for Southern Expressway. More than 90% have internet access and therefore the application is not much difficult to implement in Sri Lanka. Even though, people are willing to use ridesharing application, there are some barriers have identified through this study such as gender issues, social status and fear to travel with strangers. Anyhow, research findings have shed green light to implement the ridesharing methods in southern Expressway despite of the prevailing barrier

A Qualitative Content Analysis of Sustainable Quality of Life Concept in Research Articles

Sustainable Quality of Life is a new concept that emerged in socioeconomically wealthy countries with high importance given to the concepts of Quality of Life and Sustainability. It is evident that many macroeconomic aspects such as inflation, unemployment, economic growth, etc. impact the sustainability of quality of life. The aim of the study is to analyse the evolution of the concept of sustainable quality of life and to define the primary macroeconomic factors that affect the sustainable quality of life. The study was conducted as a qualitative content analysis of research articles, grounding the research questions of (a) what is sustainability, (b) what is quality of life, (c) what is the sustainable quality of life, and (d) how to achieve a sustainable quality of life. Categories were developed for each research question and the frequency of usage of the category was used to answer each question. It is observed that many types of research have been carried out to study sustainability, quality of life, sustainable quality of life, different indicators of sustainability, indicators of quality of life, and measurement of quality of life with different approaches. Innovation, research, creativity health, education and training, social relations, safety, environment, and quality of services contribute vastly to the achievement of sustainable quality of life. Further, it is observed that there are only a few research articles that have focused on how to achieve a sustainable quality of life and it is a broad concept that requires more attention and in-depth study

Expressive Policy Analysis with Enhanced System Dynamicity

Despite several research studies, the effective analysis of policy based systems remains a significant challenge. Policy analysis should at least (i) be expressive (ii) take account of obligations and authorizations, (iii) include a dynamic system model, and (iv) give useful diagnostic information. We present a logic-based policy analysis framework which satisfies these requirements, showing how many significant policy-related properties can be analysed, and we give details of a prototype implementation. Copyright 2009 ACM

Household water security through stored rainwater and consumer acceptability: a case study of the Anuradhapura District

Rainwater harvesting has increased in popularity in Sri Lanka over the past two decades due to the number of water supply projects funded by the government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The stored rainwater can provide accessible, reliable, timely and adequate supplies of water to households but there are uncertainties as to safety, in terms of water quality, and consumer acceptability. A study was, therefore, conducted in the Anuradhapura District, in the dry zone, to assess consumer acceptability of stored rainwater for household purposes and to conduct rainwater quality tests in a laboratory. The majority of households in Anuradhapura meet their drinking water requirements from protected wells (59.6 %). Prior to the project, people greatly preferred open wells as a source of domestic water, followed by tubewells, because they believed that water in open wells is of good quality and drinkable. However, stored rainwater has become the priority source now, especially through roof rainwater harvesting (RRWH), which is used during the dry periods. The study revealed that more than 85 % of households use stored rainwater for drinking although some have concerns over the quality and only drink it after boiling. The easy accessibility of water and the assurance by the project team that it is of good quality are the main reasons that people are willing to drink it. The acceptability of stored rainwater for consumption was very high in water-scarce areas and with the increasing distance to the nearest and alternative sources of good-quality water. Of those who felt that they had adequate water, 84 % of the sample households found it adequate in the wet season but only 21 % in the dry season. Water quality analysis revealed that the chemical and physical quality of stored rainwater is within the acceptable range with respect to Sri Lankan Standards, SLS: 614, for potable water quality (SLIS 1983). Other domestic water sources exceeded standards for electrical conductivity, total alkalinity, hardness, ammonium nitrogen, fluorides and total iron. However, stored rainwater was of lower biological quality than other domestic water sources.Length: pp.87-97Domestic waterWater securityWater harvestingWater qualityRural areasCase studies