The impact of trade liberalisation on the Indonesian food crop sector : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Agricultural Economics at Massey University

Studies of agricultural trade policies in developed countries generally focus their attention on impacts in their own domestic markets. Less attention has been given to impacts on developing countries nor their need for special and differential treatment in multilateral trade negotiations. This study assesses the impacts of trade liberalisation by modelling the outcome of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations. The removal of support in the industrialised nations on the Indonesian food crops sector was examined. Using the Static World Policy Simulation (SWOPSIM) model of world agricultural trade, the impacts on Indonesian consumption, production and net trade were estimated. The results indicate that Indonesian exports of corn would expand, and the country could also become an exporter of rice. Imports of sugar could expand partly as a result of a reduction in Indonesian sugar subsidies. While multilateral trade liberalisation that results in higher world prices may have a negative effect on food importing developing countries, this was found not to be the case for Indonesia (at least for the food crops studied). The increase in producer welfare would more than compensate for the fall in consumer welfare, government subsidy expenditures would fall and the country's trade balance would improve. In addition, continuing unilateral deregulatory and liberalisation measures in other sectors of the Indonesian economy, as well as in agriculture, will provide scope for the development of further new export opportunities

Detecting and evaluating land cover change in the eastern half of East Timor (1972-2011)

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.Land use / land cover (LULC) change detection based on remote sensing (RS) data is an important source of information for various decision support systems. In East Timor where forest plays a key role in sustaining communities’ livelihoods the information derived from LULC change detection is invaluable to the conservation, sustainable development and management of forest resources. To assess the patterns of land cover change, as a result of complex socio-economic factors, satellite imagery and image processing techniques can be useful. This study is concerned with identifying change in land use and land cover types in East Timor between 1972 and 2011, using satellite images from Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ sensors. Seven major cover types were identified in this study including forest, mixed rangeland, grassland, farmland, built-up areas, bare soil and water. A combination of NDVI differencing, supervised and unsupervised classification was used to derive final classification maps. Due to the lack of ground truth data, further processing were performed to improve the final classification maps by applying rationality change test. Post-classification comparison change detection technique was used to assess categorical changes between 1972 and 2011. The results highlight a significant level of deforestation due to uncontrolled illegal logging and increase in farmland, built-up areas, as well as bare soil. This decline has had considerable impact on the livelihoods of rural communities. As the new nation of Timor-Leste establishes itself, it must consider its current stock and distribution of natural resources to ensure that development efforts are geared towards sustainable outcomes. Without this information historical patterns of resource consumption, development efforts may, unwittingly, lead to continuing decline in forest resources

A system to manage the allocation of MSc Dissertations at University of Minho

This paper describes the basis for the specification of an IT infrastructure, supported by a website, designed to manage the entire paperwork process associated with the management of Masters Dissertations. With this infrastructure it is possible to disclose the subjects offered, to allocate each subject to a candidate - "dissertations in progress", browse dissertations that are awaiting review and consult the archive of dissertations with exams already carried out. PostgreSQL technology was used to support the databases. This technology was chosen to be robust, with easy integration with PHP and its code is open source. The website is housed in a Linux server based infrastructure ready to run continuously.(undefined

Modelo para mapeamento das percepções dos usuários a respeito dos serviços prestados por uma biblioteca especializada

Nowadays a question arises: how to evaluate the users’ satisfaction regarding the services provided by a library? This paper aims to propose and apply a model for evaluating the satisfaction of the users of a library, regarding the library services. The proposal should be divided into three steps: a systematized literature review that has supported the construction of a questionnaire; a data collection though applying the questionnaire to a sample; and, the analysis of the data collected. In the first step, it was performed an extensive and systematized literature review on the bases Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO, Scopus and ISI Web of Science was developed to support the construction this model. The results from the literature review were the input for defining the set of evaluation criteria and to prepare a questionnaire for evaluating the users’ satisfaction. In the second step the questionnaire was applied to a sample by users of a library specialized in the field of nuclear technology, in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. In the third step, the data collected were complied and analysed though statistical frequency analysis. The sample was composed of 117 respondents of whom 94 returned forms. The results indicated that the criteria on which the library best performed were the conservation and adequacy of the collection. In the other hand, the results also have shown that the update criteria and international coverage of the collection are the ones that have should receive more attention, once they were perceived as having low performance and high importance for the users’ satisfaction. The main contributions of this research are: the criteria set and the frame for performing the survey and the way data were analysed.No ambiente da gestão de bibliotecas, vem à tona a seguinte questão: como avaliar a satisfação dos usuários com os serviços prestados pelas bibliotecas? Este artigo propõe e aplica um modelo para a avaliação da satisfação dos usuários quanto aos serviços oferecidos por uma biblioteca e, também, identificar o grau de importância dos diferentes aspectos deste tipo de serviço. Para isto uma revisão sistematizada da literatura foi desenvolvida a fim de dar suporte à construção do modelo. Esta revisão foi especialmente útil para definir o conjunto de critérios de avaliação e para a elaboração do instrumento de coleta, o qual foi aplicado a uma amostra composta por 117 usuários de uma biblioteca especializada na área de tecnologia nuclear, dos quais retornaram 94 formulários. Os dados coletados indicaram a importância e o desempenho de cada um dos aspectos considerados no questionário, apontando os critérios nos quais os usuários ficaram mais satisfeitos foram a conservação e a adequação do acervo. Por outro lado, os resultados também mostraram que atualização e cobertura internacional do acervo são os aspectos prioritários para ações de melhoria, visto que são aqueles em que os usuários estão menos satisfeitos e também são aqueles que os usuários consideram mais importantes. Destacam-se como contribuições da pesquisa: o conjunto de critérios; o instrumento de coleta; e, a proposta para tratamento dos dados