We consider the classic puzzle of why people turn out for elections in substantial numbers even though formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents would not vote. If one assumes that voters do not make systematic mistakes, the most plausible explanation seems to be that agents receive a warm glow from the act of voting itself. However, this begs the question of why agents feel a warm...

Plant-suspension cells are an in vitro system that can be used for recombinant protein production under carefully controlled certified conditions. Plant-suspension cells can be grown in shake flasks or fermenters to produce secondary metabolites, like vincristine and vinblastine, and to produce recombinant proteins after transformation. This review article focuses on discussing the generation o...

⎯A typical data mining project uses data collected for various purposes, ranging from routinely gathered data, to process improvement projects, and to data required for archival purposes. In some cases, the set of considered features might be large (a wide data set) and sufficient for extraction of knowledge. In other cases the data set might be narrow and insufficient to extract meaningful kno...

Female farming systems draws attention to women’s (re)productive roles in agriculture, with particular attention to questions of power, equity, and empowerment. Female farming systems as an organizing concept highlights what was a surprisingly neglected field of study until the 1970s and provides insights into the gendered nature of agriculture. In the past and the present the term “farmer” pre...

The experience of women firefighters involved in the disaster response to the 1994 NSW bushfires is explored using an eclectic feminist perspective. Accounts of non-stereotypic behaviour such as assertiveness, bravery and the leadership of men suggest a form of women's liberation which is anomalous to radical feminist prescriptions for improving women's social position. Using egalitarian rhetor...

Organic farming aims to reduce the effect on the ecosystem and enhance biodiversity in agricultural areas, but the long-term effectiveness of its application is unclear. Assessments have rarely included various taxonomic groups with different ecological and economic roles. In paddy fields with different numbers of years elapsed since the transition from conventional to organic farming, we inves...

One of the major goals of the Sustainable Agriculture Farming initiatives at UC Davis is to provide information about the feasibility of adopting conservation tillage and cover cropping at the farm level. The project includes two tillage schemes: standard tillage (ST) and conservation tillage (CT), and three farming methods: conventional, organic, and winter legume cover crop. All three product...

Community characteristics of Collembola assemblages in conventional, integrated and organic fields of winter wheat were compared among three randomly chosen areas in England using analysis of similarities, cluster analysis, multi-dimensional scaling and several measures of diversity and evenness. Indicator values were used to identify indicator species. Significant differences were found in the...

Fish farming has seriously influenced the aquatic environment in Sancha reservoir in SW China since 1985 and has been strongly restricted since 2005. Thus, phosphorus speciation in a sediment core dated between 1945 and 2010 at cm-resolution and in surface sediments from Sancha reservoir may allow us track how fish farming impacts phosphorus dynamics in lake sediments. Fish farming shifts the m...

AIMS The farming environment in childhood has been reported to decrease the risk of sensitisation to allergens. The purpose of the present study was to explore whether later exposure to a farming environment also could affect this sensitisation. METHODS A population based sample of 202 women who did not live on a farm and 231 who did. The subjects filled in a questionnaire and underwent skin ...