Special thanks are due to Dr. Mike Griffiths (OECD Consultant) as well as to those who contributed to the case studies set out in the publication on which the primer is based. Biotechnology provides tools for adapting and modifying the biological organisms, products, processes and systems found in nature to develop processes that are eco-efficient and products that are not only more profitable ...

fuzzy water quality index (fwqi) was applied in order to assess the degree of drinking water resources in yazd province, iran. thisstudy has also offered the creation of a new fuzzy water quality index (fwqi) to evaluate this tool’s applicability. 12 chemicalparameters including toxic and non-toxic heavy metals measured in 71 groundwater samples collected from drinking water resourcesin rural a...

introduction: health care systems depend critically on the size, skill, and commitment of the health workforce. therefore, researchers have a close observation on the subjects which leads to an increase in the productivity of human resources. this study aims at determining the relationship between the quality of work life and the productivity of knowledge workers of the central field of shiraz ...

Soil microbes play key roles in ecosystems, yet the impact of their diversity on plant communities is still poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that the diversity of belowground plant-associated soil fungi promotes plant productivity and plant coexistence. Using additive partitioning of biodiversity effects developed in plant biodiversity studies, we demonstrate that this positive relationsh...

Although the agricultural sector consumes more than 90% of the extracted water, its efficiency is lower than other sectors. Also, according to the population growth and critical role of food security, and the necessity to supply water to other sectors, an increasing pressure to save water, optimized consumption and increasing water use productivity in agriculture will occur in the future. Nowad...

We analyze the cost of quality improvement in hospitals, dealing with two challenges. Hospital quality is multidimensional and hard to measure, while unobserved productivity may influence quality supply. We infer the quality of hospitals in Los Angeles from patient choices. We then incorporate ‘revealed quality’ into a cost function, instrumenting with hospital demand. We find that revealed qua...