Measuring societal awareness of the rural agrarian landscape: indicators and scale issues

The work presented in this report is part of the effort to define the landscape state and diversity indicator in the frame of COM (2006) 508 “Development of agri-environmental indicators for monitoring the integration of environmental concerns into the common agricultural policy”. The Communication classifies the indicators according to their level of development, which, for the landscape indicator is “in need of substantial improvements in order to become fully operational”. For this reason a full re-definition of the indicator has been carried out, following the initial proposal presented in the frame of the IRENA operation (“Indicator Reporting on the Integration of Environmental Concerns into Agricultural Policy”). The new proposal for the landscape state and diversity indicator is structured in three components: the first concerns the degree of naturalness, the second landscape structure, the third the societal appreciation of the rural landscape. While the first two components rely on a strong bulk of existing literature, the development of the methodology has made evident the need for further analysis of the third component, which is based on a newly proposed top-down approach. This report presents an in-depth analysis of such component of the indicator, and the effort to include a social dimension in large scale landscape assessment.

Advertising, promotion, and the rise of a national building society movement in interwar Britain

This article examines the role of advertisement and promotion in the successful development of nationwide building societies in interwar Britain and the rapid overall growth of the building society movement. Major building societies are shown to have used extensive advertising to compensate for their initial lack of established national brands, promote home-ownership, and make savers aware of the attractive earnings and high security of building society savings. During a period when most building societies had very limited branch networks, extensive advertising increased the public profile of the major societies and thus assisted their rapid expansion via lower-cost modes such as agency networks.

Regulatory reform and productivity change in Indian banking

This paper examines the impact of regulatory reform on productivity growth and its components for Indian banks in 1992-2009. We estimate parametric and non-parametric efficiency frontiers, followed by Divisia and Malmquist indexes of Total Factor Productivity respectively. To account for technology heterogeneity among ownership types we utilise a metafrontier approach. Results are consistent across methodologies and show sustained productivity growth, driven mainly by technological progress. Furthermore, results indicate that different ownership types react differently to changes in the operating environment. The position of foreign banks becomes increasingly dominant and their production technology becomes the best practice in the industry.

Measuring the effects of manipulating stimulus presentation time on sensorimotor alpha and low beta reactivity during hand movement observation

The present study addresses three methodological questions that have been ignored in previous research on EEG indices of the human mirror neuron system (hMNS), particularly in regard to autistic individuals. The first question regards how to elicit the EEG indexed hMNS during movement observation: Is hMNS activation best elicited using long stimulus presentations or multiple short repetitions? The second question regards what EEG sensorimotor frequency bands reflect sensorimotor reactivity during hand movement observation? The third question regards how widespread is the EEG reactivity over the sensorimotor cortex during movement observation? The present study explored sensorimotor alpha and low beta reactivity during hand movement versus static hand or bouncing balls observation and compared two experimental protocols (long exposure vs. multiple repetitions) in the same participants. Results using the multiple repetitions protocol indicated a greater low beta desynchronisation over the sensorimotor cortex during hand movement compared to static hand and bouncing balls observation. This result was not achieved using the long exposure protocol. Therefore, the present study suggests that the multiple repetitions protocol is a more robust protocol to use when exploring the sensorimotor reactivity induced by hand action observation. In addition, sensorimotor low beta desynchronisation was differently modulated during hand movement, static hand and bouncing balls observation (non-biological motion) while it was not the case for sensorimotor alpha and that suggest that low beta may be a more sensitive index of hMNS activation during biological motion observation. In conclusion the present study indicates that sensorimotor reactivity of low beta during hand movement observation was found to be more widespread over the sensorimotor cortex than previously thought.

Another reform? proposals for the post-2013 Common Agricultural Policy

Following two decades of policy change, in 2011 the European Commission tabled proposals for a new ‘reform’ of the CAP. A major component of the reform would be a revamping of the existing system of direct payments to farmers. For example, 30% of the spend would be dependent on farmers respecting new greening criteria; and payments would be restricted to active farmers and subject to a payment cap. These proposals will be debated by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament throughout 2012, and possibly 2013, before final decisions are reached. What aspects, if any, of the proposals will prove acceptable is yet to be discerned. Although tabled as part of a financial package, the proposals do not appear to be driven by financial exigency: indeed they seek to maintain the expenditure status quo. Nor do they appear to be driven by international pressures: if anything, they backtrack on previous attempts to bring the CAP into conformity with a post-Doha WTO Agreement on Agriculture. Instead they seek to establish a new partnership between society and ‘farmers, who keep rural areas alive, who are in contact with the ecosystems and who produce the food we eat’ (Cioloș 2011), in an attempt to justify continuing support.

Youth justice reform: redressing age discrimination against children?

This article considers whether the system of reprimands and final warnings in the youth justice system in England and Wales constitutes age discrimination for the purposes of human rights law. Whilst much youth justice discourse has addressed the use of diversionary measures that steer children away from formal justice processes, little attention has been paid to measures which negatively discriminate against children, in comparison to adults, without reasonable justification. The discussion contextualizes the issue within discourses on the sociology of childhood and youth justice, and considers why there is a general reluctance to recognize children as ‘victims’ of age discrimination.

Reframing 'crisis' in fair trade coffee production: trajectories of agrarian change in Nicaragua

A focus on crisis provides a methodological window to understand how agrarian change shapes producer engagement in fair trade. This orientation challenges a seperation between the market and development, situating fair trade within global processes that incorporate agrarian histories of social change and conflict. Reframing crisis as a condition of agrarian life, rather than emphasizing its cyclical manifestation within the global economy, reveals how market-driven development encompasses the material conditions of peoples' existence in ambiguous and contradictory ways. Drawing on the case of coffee production in Nicaragua, experiences of crisis demonstrate that greater attention needs to be paid to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of development within regional commodity assemblages to address entrenched power relations and unequal access to land and resources. This questions moral certainties when examining the paradox of working in and against the market, and suggests that a better understanding of specific trajectories of development could improve fair trade's objective of enhancing producer livelihoods.

Contested institutions? Traditional leaders and land access and control in communal areas of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The South African government has endeavoured to strengthen property rights in communal areas and develop civil society institutions for community-led development and natural resource management. However, the effectiveness of this remains unclear as the emergence and operation of civil society institutions in these areas is potentially constrained by the persistence of traditional authorities. Focusing on the former Transkei region of Eastern Cape Province, three case study communities are used examine the extent to which local institutions overlap in issues of land access and control. Within these communities, traditional leaders (chiefs and headmen) continue to exercise complete and sole authority over land allocation and use this to entrench their own positions. However, in the absence of effective state support, traditional authorities have only limited power over how land is used and in enforcing land rights, particularly over communal resources such as rangeland. This diminishes their local legitimacy and encourages some groups to contest their authority by cutting fences, ignoring collective grazing decisions and refusing to pay ‘fees’ levied on them. They are encouraged in such activities by the presence of democratically elected local civil society institutions such as ward councillors and farmers’ organisations, which have broad appeal and are increasingly responsible for much of the agrarian development that takes place, despite having no direct mandate over land. Where it occurs at all, interaction between these different institutions is generally restricted to approval being required from traditional leaders for land allocated to development projects. On this basis it is argued that a more radical approach to land reform in communal areas is required, which transfers all powers over land to elected and accountable local institutions and integrates land allocation, land management and agrarian development more effectively.

The time course of implicit affective picture processing: an eye movement study

Consistent with a negativity bias account, neuroscientific and behavioral evidence demonstrates modulation of even early sensory processes by unpleasant, potentially threat-relevant information. The aim of this research is to assess the extent to which pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli presented extrafoveally capture attention and impact eye movement control. We report an experiment examining deviations in saccade metrics in the presence of emotional image distractors that are close to a nonemotional target. We additionally manipulate the saccade latency to test when the emotional distractor has its biggest impact on oculomotor control. The results demonstrate that saccade landing position was pulled toward unpleasant distractors, and that this pull was due to the quick saccade responses. Overall, these findings support a negativity bias account of early attentional control and call for the need to consider the time course of motivated attention when affect is implicit

Movement of newly assimilated 13C carbon in the grass Lolium perenne and its incorporation into rhizosphere microbial DNA

One of the key processes that drives rhizosphere microbial activity is the exudation of soluble organic carbon (C) by plant roots. We describe an experiment designed to determine the impact of defoliation on the partitioning and movement of C in grass (Lolium perenne L.), soil and grass-sterile sand microcosms, using a (13)CO(2) pulse-labelling method. The pulse-derived (13)C in the shoots declined over time, but that of the roots remained stable throughout the experiment. There were peaks in the atom% (13)C of rhizosphere CO(2) in the first few hours after labelling probably due to root respiration, and again at around 100 h. The second peak was only seen in the soil microcosms and not in those with sterilised sand as the growth medium, indicating possible microbial activity. Incorporation of the (13)C label into the microbial biomass increased at 100 h when incorporation into replicating cells, as indicated by the amounts of the label in the microbial DNA, started to increase. These results indicate that the rhizosphere environment is conducive to bacterial growth and replication. The results also show that defoliation had no impact on the pattern of movement of (13)C from plant roots into the microbial population in the rhizosphere.

The UK's Electoral Reform Referendum of May 2011

The UK’s second nationwide referendum, held in May 2011, offers rich opportunities for analysing the dynamics of a referendum campaign. The articles gathered together in this symposium address three themes. The first concerns the determinants and dynamics of public opinion during a referendum campaign, the second relates to the potential for interaction between the referendum and simultaneous elections, and the third focuses on coverage of the referendum in the media. Following a brief outline of the background to the referendum, this paper introduces the contribution that each article makes to these themes.