Genetic and economic analysis of a targeted marker-assisted wheat breeding strategy

The advent of molecular markers as a tool to aid selection has provided plant breeders with the opportunity to rapidly deliver superior genetic solutions to problems in agricultural production systems. However, a major constraint to the implementation of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in pragmatic breeding programs in the past has been the perceived high relative cost of MAS compared to conventional phenotypic selection. In this paper, computer simulation was used to design a genetically effective and economically efficient marker-assisted breeding strategy aimed at a specific outcome. Under investigation was a strategy involving the integration of both restricted backcrossing and doubled haploid (DH) technology. The point at which molecular markers are applied in a selection strategy can be critical to the effectiveness and cost efficiency of that strategy. The application of molecular markers was considered at three phases in the strategy: allele enrichment in the BC1F1 population, gene selection at the haploid stage and the selection for recurrent parent background of DHs prior to field testing. Overall, incorporating MAS at all three stages was the most effective, in terms of delivering a high frequency of desired outcomes and at combining the selected favourable rust resistance, end use quality and grain yield alleles. However, when costs were included in the model the combination of MAS at the BC1F1 and haploid stage was identified as the optimal strategy. A detailed economic analysis showed that incorporation of marker selection at these two stages not only increased genetic gain over the phenotypic alternative but actually reduced the over all cost by 40%.

Ecological-economic modeling for biodiversity management: Potential, pitfalls, and prospects

Ecologists and economists both use models to help develop strategies for biodiversity management. The practical use of disciplinary models, however, can be limited because ecological models tend not to address the socioeconomic dimension of biodiversity management, whereas economic models tend to neglect the ecological dimension. Given these shortcomings of disciplinary models, there is a necessity to combine ecological and economic knowledge into ecological-economic models. It is insufficient if scientists work separately in their own disciplines and combine their knowledge only when it comes to formulating management recommendations. Such an approach does not capture feedback loops between the ecological and the socioeconomic systems. Furthermore, each discipline poses the management problem in its own way and comes up with its own most appropriate solution. These disciplinary solutions, however are likely to be so different that a combined solution considering aspects of both disciplines cannot be found. Preconditions for a successful model-based integration of ecology and economics include (1) an in-depth knowledge of the two disciplines, (2) the adequate identification and framing of the problem to be investigated, and (3) a common understanding between economists and ecologists of modeling and scale. To further advance ecological-economic modeling the development of common benchmarks, quality controls, and refereeing standards for ecological-economic models is desirable.

Extent and economic effect of heat loads on dairy cattle production in Australia

Objective To investigate the extent of heat load problems, caused by the combination of excessive temperature and humidity, in Holstein-Friesian cows in Australia. Also, to outline how milk production losses and consequent costs from this can be estimated and minimised. Procedures Long-term meteorological data for Australia were analysed to determine the distribution of hot conditions over space and time. Fifteen dairy production regions were identified for higher-resolution data analysis. Both the raw meteorological data and their integration into a temperature-humidity thermal index were compiled onto a computer program. This mapping software displays the distribution of climatic patterns, both Australia-wide and within the selected dairying regions. Graphical displays of the variation in historical records for 200 locations in the 15 dairying regions are also available. As a separate study, production data from research stations, on-farm trials and milk factory records were statistically analysed and correlated with the climatic indices, to estimate production losses due to hot conditions. Results Both milk yields and milk constituents declined with increases in the temperature-humidity index. The onset and rate of this decline are dependent on a number of factors, including location, level of production, adaptation, and management regime. These results have been integrated into a farm-level economic analysis for managers of dairy properties. Conclusion By considering the historical patterns of hot conditions over time and space, along with expected production losses, managers of dairy farms can now conduct an economic evaluation of investment strategies to alleviate heat loads. These strategies include the provision of sprinklers, shade structures, or combinations of these.

Economic issues and lessons arising from the community rainforest reforestation program

A large number of socio-economic research projects have been conducted in north Queensland which have drawn on observations from, or been otherwise inspired by, the Community Rainforest Reforestation Program (CRRP). The research may be considered under the headings of financial performance of farm-grown timber, externalities (or environmental values), impediments to tree planting on farms, analysis of the timber supply chain including timber marketing, and facilitation of forest industry development. This paper summarises a variety of insights generated by the research, on small-scale forestry based on native tree species and on policy measures which may be adopted to promote tree growing on farms in tropical north Queensland.

Acquirer and owner perceptions of technology integration:the South African case

Developing countries are subject to the same global pressures as their developed counterparts but have additional domestic challenges that may place them at a significant, and perhaps insurmountable, disadvantage. However, technology still offers them the opportunity to participate in the international economy. Difficult conditions in their countries do not absolve managers from formulating and implementing technology policies that can make their firms globally competitive. At a macro-economic level, a number of broad developmental issues impact on the use of technology in developing countries. The subject of this paper is to examine the challenge for South African firms in their efforts to master technology, despite internal and external difficulties. Owners of technology need to consider the local context when supplying their technology to developing markets. The paper aims to investigate the views of technology recipients by examining the perceptions of South African managers regarding technology integration in a manufacturing environment. A number of technology suppliers were also interviewed in order to obtain their opinions on the issues raised by the technology acquirers. The importance of different factors in integrating technology is studied in relation to managers ’ abilities to control these variables. An importance-control grid framework is used to identify critical parameters and to assess how they can be managed in a complex environment.

Industrial relations in the road passenger transport industry-a political-economic analysis.

This thesis examines the British Bus and Tram Industry from 1889 to 1988. The first determinant of the pattern of industrial relations is the development of the labour-process. The labour process changes with the introduction of new technology (electrified trams and mechanised buses), the concentration and centralisation of ownership, the decline of competition, changing market position, municipal and state regulation, ownership and control. The tram industry, as a consequence of electrification, is almost wholly municipally owned and the history of the labour process from horse-trams to the decline of the industry is examined. The bus industry has a less unified structure and is examined by sector; London, Municipal, and Territorial/Provincial. The small independent sector is largely ignored. The labour process is examined from the horse-bus to the present day. The development of resistance in the labour process is discussed both as a theoretical problematic (the `Braverman Debate') and through the process of unionisation, the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the unions, the development of national bargaining structures (National Joint Industrial Council and the National Council for the Omnibus Industry), and the development of resistance to those processes. This resistance takes either a syndicalist form, or under Communist Party leadership the form of rank and file movements, or simply unofficial organisations of branch officials. The process of centralisation of the unions, bureaucratisation and the institutionalisation of bargaining and the relationship between this process and the role of the Unions in the Labour Party is examined. Neo-corporatism, that is the increasing integration of the leadership of the main Union, the T.G.W.U.with the Labour Party and with the State is discussed. In theoretical terms, this thesis considers the debate around the notion of `labour process', the relationship between labour process and labour politics and between labour process and labour history. These relationships are placed within a discussion of class consciousness.

Economic reforms as a tool to attract foreign direct investment:is it a chimera?

The policy implication of the existing literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows is that countries that require FDI can attract it by adopting policy measures that facilitate the emergence of appropriate regulatory and institutional environment, greater integration with the global economy and the development of resources like human capital. We test the plausible hypothesis that, on the contrary, FDI flows are largely path dependent, and our empirical exercise finds prima facie support in favour of this hypothesis. This has obvious implications for FDI flows to poor countries.

The Greater London Authority:problems of strategy integration

The Act that established the Greater London Authority (GLA) incorporated many of New Labour's aspirations for modern governance. Among those aspirations was the notion of policy integration, or 'joining up'. The Mayor of Greater London was required to develop a number of strategies, broadly in the planning and environmental policy domains, and to ensure that those strategies meshed into a coherent overall strategy for promoting London's economic, social and environmental well-being. How would this work in practice, given the need for coordination between the GLA and a number of related functional bodies, and given the political imperative for the GLA to make an impact quickly? Through our analysis of the strategy development and integration efforts of the GLA in its first nine months, we have gleaned new insights into the highly complex and difficult process of policy integration. We argue that the high aspirations of the Act for policy integration have not been met, policy integration instead being narrowly interpreted as the coordination of strategies to the Mayor's political agenda. Finally,we reflect on the likelihood of the GLA, as currently constituted, evolving to meet the functional requirement of policy integration.

Degree of vertical integration and its buffering effects on political uncertainty

The focus of this study is on the governance decisions in a concurrent channels context, in the case of uncertainty. The study examines how a firm chooses to deploy its sales force in times of uncertainty, and the subsequent performance outcome of those deployment choices. The theoretical framework is based on multiple theories of governance, including transaction cost analysis (TCA), agency theory, and institutional economics. Three uncertainty variables are investigated in this study. The first two are demand and competitive uncertainty which are considered to be industry-level market uncertainty forms. The third uncertainty, political uncertainty, is chosen as it is an important dimension of institutional environments, capturing non-economic circumstances such as regulations and political systemic issues. The study employs longitudinal secondary data from a Thai hotel chain, comprising monthly observations from January 2007 – December 2012. This hotel chain has its operations in 4 countries, Thailand, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates – Dubai, and Egypt, all of which experienced substantial demand, competitive, and political uncertainty during the study period. This makes them ideal contexts for this study. Two econometric models, both deploying Newey-West estimations, are employed to test 13 hypotheses. The first model considers the relationship between uncertainty and governance. The second model is a version of Newey-West, using an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimator and a Two-Stage Least Squares model (2SLS), to test the direct effect of uncertainty on performance and the moderating effect of governance on the relationship between uncertainty and performance. The observed relationship between uncertainty and governance observed follows a core prediction of TCA; that vertical integration is the preferred choice of governance when uncertainty rises. As for the subsequent performance outcomes, the results corroborate that uncertainty has a negative effect on performance. Importantly, the findings show that becoming more vertically integrated cannot help moderate the effect of demand and competitive uncertainty, but can significantly moderate the effect of political uncertainty. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications, and extend our knowledge of the impact on uncertainty significantly, as well as bringing an institutional perspective to TCA. Further, they offer managers novel insight into the nature of different types of uncertainty, their impact on performance, and how channel decisions can mitigate these impacts.

Rules-based economic governance in the European Union: A reappraisal of national fiscal rules.

The economic and financial crisis of 2007/2009 has posed unexpected challenges on both the global and the regional level. Besides the US, the EU has been the most severely hit by the current economic crisis. The financial and banking crisis on the one hand and the sovereign debt crisis on the other hand have clearly shown that without a bold, constructive and systematic change of the economic governance structure of the Union, not just the sustainability of the monetary zone but also the viability of the whole European integration process can be seriously undermined. The current crisis is, however, only a symptom, which made all those contradictions overt that were already heavily embedded in the system. Right from the very beginning, the deficit and the debt rules of the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact have proved to be controversial cornerstones in the fiscal governance framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Yet, member states of the EU (both within and outside of the EMU) have shown an immense interest in adopting numerical constraints on the domestic level without hesitation. The main argument for the introduction of national fiscal rules was mostly to strengthen the accountability and credibility of national fiscal policy-making. The paper, however, claims that a relatively large portion of national rules were adopted only after the start of deceleration of the debt-to-GDP ratios. Accordingly, national rules were hardly the sole triggering factors of maintaining fiscal discipline; rather, they served as the key elements of a comprehensive reform package of public budgeting. It can be safely argued, therefore, that countries decide to adopt fiscal rules because they want to explicitly signal their strong commitment to fiscal discipline. In other words, it is not fiscal rules per se what matter in delivering fiscal stability but a strong political commitment.

Az európai integráció hatása a közép-kelet-európai országok mezőgazdaságára (The effect of European integration on agriculture in Central East European countries)

Az Európai Unió számos új lehetőséget kínált és új kihívást jelentett a 2004-ben és 2007-ben belépő 12 új tagország számára. A csatlakozás mezőgazdaságra gyakorolt hatása már a bővítést megelőzően is az egyik legtöbbet vitatott kérdés volt mind a régi tagországok, mind a tagjelöltek körében. A szerzők az új tagországok agrárgazdasági teljesítményei mögött meghúzódó tényezőket igyekeznek azonosítani a legfrissebb adatok és az eddigi tapasztalatok tükrében. Eredményeik szerint a csatlakozás alapvetően pozitív hatást gyakorolt a térség mezőgazdaságára, noha az egyes országok különböző módon éltek a csatlakozás kínálta lehetőségeikkel, ami a kezdeti adottságokkal, valamint a belépés előtti és utáni agrárpolitikájukkal magyarázható. A pozitív hatások mellett számos nehézség is felmerült - ezek közül az erős versenyben való helytállás nehézségei, illetve a kisgazdaságok hátrányos helyzete bizonyultak a leginkább meghatározónak.

The Europe of Elites. A Study into the Europeanness of Europe's Political and Economic Elites

Contents: 1 Introduction: European integration as an elite project, Heinrich Best, György Lengyel, and Luca Verzichelli; 2 Europe à la carte? European citizenship and its dimensions from the perspective of national elites, Maurizio Cotta and Federico Russo; 3 Ready to run Europe? Perspectives of a supranational career among EU national elites, Nikolas Hubé and Luca Verzichelli; 4 National elites’ preferences on the Europeanization of policy making, José Real-Dato, Borbála Göncz, and György Lengyel; 5 The other side of European identity: elite perceptions of threats to a cohesive Europe, Irmina Matonyté and Vaidas Morkevicius; 6 Elites’ views on European institutions: national experiences sifted through ideological orientations, Daniel Gaxie and Nicolas Hubé; 7 Patterns of regional diversity in political elites’ attitudes, Mladen Lazic, Miguel Jerez-Mir, Vladimir Vuletic, and Rafael Vázquez-García; 8 The elites–masses gap in European integration, Wolfgang C. Müller, Marcelo Jenny, and Alejandro Ecker; 9 Party elites and the domestic discourse on the EU, Nicolo Conti; 10 Elite foundations of European integration: a causal analysis, Heinrich Best; 11 Elites of Europe and the Europe of elites: a conclusion, Heinrich Best; 12 Appendix. Surveying elites: information on the study design and field report of the IntUne elite survey, György Lengyel and Stefan Jahr.

The integration by trade and FDI of emerging economies: The Asian example

The paper investigates the role of regionalization and regional identity in the endeavours of emerging economies to connect successfully to the global world economy. It addresses the question of whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with its loose institutional integration framework, has contributed to the global integration of its very heterogenous members in the first decade of the 21st century – and, if so, what are the drivers behind this. The paper summarizes connecting theories, using a multidisciplinary approach, and uses descriptive statistical analysis to identify the achievements of the ASEAN-6 countries within global trade and foreign direct invesment (FDI) flows in the given time period. We suggest that ASEAN countries, with their efforts to initiate interconnecting regional organizations in Asia, most specifically the ASEAN+3 (APT) construction, did contribute to greater integratedness of member countries; and they have created a regional image with a common market and production base. Such achievements, however, can be in great part attributed to the micro-level activities of international and regional firms wishing to establish cross-border production networks in these countries.

Toothache and social and economic conditions among adolescents in Northeastern Brazil

O objetivo deste estudo foi relacionar dor de dente com condição socioeconômica, acesso aos serviços de saúde bucal e estilo de vida em adolescentes do município de Sobral, Ceará, desenvolvido com delineamento transversal analítico, com amostra composta por 688 indivíduos. A prevalência de dor de dente no grupo pesquisado foi de 31,8%. Para avaliar a relação entre as variáveis independentes e a dor de dente, realizou-se teste de associação pelo qui-quadrado, estimando-se a razão de prevalências por meio da regressão de Poisson. Os fatores que mais demonstraram relação com a dor de dente foram severidade da cárie, motivo do atendimento odontológico relacionado com urgência, frequência ao dentista e recebimento de escova na escola. Observou-se que a alta prevalência de dor de dente em adolescentes está diretamente relacionada às condições de acesso, assim como às características das ações desenvolvidas pelos serviços de saúde. Assim como há necessidade da implantação de serviços vinculados à promoção de saúde, pautados pela equidade e integralidade, é necessária a implantação de serviços de urgência que não simplesmente intervenham na dor de forma mutiladora, mas a encarem como mecanismo de estímulo ao desenvolvimento de procedimentos de prevenção das doenças bucais.

Coal-fired Power Plants with Flexible Amine-based CCS and Co-located Wind Power: Environmental, Economic and Reliability Outcomes

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies provide a means to significantly reduce carbon emissions from the existing fleet of fossil-fired plants, and hence can facilitate a gradual transition from conventional to more sustainable sources of electric power. This is especially relevant for coal plants that have a CO2 emission rate that is roughly two times higher than that of natural gas plants. Of the different kinds of CCS technology available, post-combustion amine based CCS is the best developed and hence more suitable for retrofitting an existing coal plant. The high costs from operating CCS could be reduced by enabling flexible operation through amine storage or allowing partial capture of CO2 during high electricity prices. This flexibility is also found to improve the power plant’s ramp capability, enabling it to offset the intermittency of renewable power sources. This thesis proposes a solution to problems associated with two promising technologies for decarbonizing the electric power system: the high costs of the energy penalty of CCS, and the intermittency and non-dispatchability of wind power. It explores the economic and technical feasibility of a hybrid system consisting of a coal plant retrofitted with a post-combustion-amine based CCS system equipped with the option to perform partial capture or amine storage, and a co-located wind farm. A techno-economic assessment of the performance of the hybrid system is carried out both from the perspective of the stakeholders (utility owners, investors, etc.) as well as that of the power system operator.

In order to perform the assessment from the perspective of the facility owners (e.g., electric power utilities, independent power producers), an optimal design and operating strategy of the hybrid system is determined for both the amine storage and partial capture configurations. A linear optimization model is developed to determine the optimal component sizes for the hybrid system and capture rates while meeting constraints on annual average emission targets of CO2, and variability of the combined power output. Results indicate that there are economic benefits of flexible operation relative to conventional CCS, and demonstrate that the hybrid system could operate as an energy storage system: providing an effective pathway for wind power integration as well as a mechanism to mute the variability of intermittent wind power.

In order to assess the performance of the hybrid system from the perspective of the system operator, a modified Unit Commitment/ Economic Dispatch model is built to consider and represent the techno-economic aspects of operation of the hybrid system within a power grid. The hybrid system is found to be effective in helping the power system meet an average CO2 emissions limit equivalent to the CO2 emission rate of a state-of-the-art natural gas plant, and to reduce power system operation costs and number of instances and magnitude of energy and reserve scarcity.