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First comes the impulse, the lure of the outdoors. Then comes walking: the considered placement of step after step, a warming up through movement and curiosity. Then comes stillness: the simple act of standing or sitting, calm and quiet, with all senses open -- not as a wish to place one's thoughts on the land, nor to seek reflection of the self or journey through personal memory, but to be still, quite simply, in mind and body, open to the land, the elements and the weather, and to the energy and story of place. Devising installations to be sited outdoors brings the landscape as well as the cultural history of particular places into the form and performance of an artwork. This wrestles final control away from us -- we must work with the environment, and, because of this, decisions are made along the way that we could never have foreseen. Uncertainty in this kind of work may be challenging but there is beauty in the synchrony of influences. And because the installations are in public spaces, there is the added dimension of other people encountering the artworks, often unexpectedly, and becoming involved with them: a dynamic of performance and audience is created. The reaction, and a sense of connection or tension between the two, is unpredictable and allows for the final completion of a piece. This work incorporates seven separate pieces and in the 'fragmentation of a rainbow' challenges complacency and expectations in a time of uncertainty: a changing climate, declining habitats and species, and a lack of clarity about how humans might balance personal and spiritual attachment to stunning landscapes, including mountains, with actions that impact them and the future of their ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary chemicals used by Western Australia's horticultural industries with respect to field control and post-harvest disinfestation procedures for the Mediterranean fruit fly are soon to be withdrawn from use because of public health concerns., When this occurs, the necessary switch to alternative control methods such as bait sprays and intensive fruit fly trapping will involve additional producer costs., The present study demonstrates that these costs are likely to exceed the costs of eradication using the sterile insect technique., Given this result, eradication cost sharing arrangements between government and industry are discussed that could produce mutual benefits in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Address examines the moral hazard problem in agri-environmental policy. It begins with a theoretical analysis of moral hazard in this context, including the identification of eight potential causes of cheating behaviour among farmers. But is cheating behaviour among farmers actually a problem for agri-environmental policy? And if it is, which are the statistically significant causes of concern? The answer seems to be: 'we don't know' as there are currently no empirical analyses of the moral hazard problem and its causes in agri-environmental policy. On this basis I analyse a set of policy solutions - to a problem for which we have no evidence of its causes or extent! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends the multi-period agri-environmental contract model of Fraser (Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 55, (2004) pp. 525-540) to include a more realistic specification of the inter-temporal penalties for non-compliance, and therefore of the inter-temporal moral hazard problem in agri-environmental policy design. It is shown that a farmer has an unambiguous preference for cheating early over cheating late in the contract period based on differences in the expected cost of compliance. It is then shown how the principal can make use of this unambiguous preference to target monitoring resources intertemporally, and in so doing, to encourage full contract duration compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delivery of food security via continued crop yield improvement alone is not an effective food security strategy, and must be supported by pre- and post-border biosecurity policies to guard against perverse outcomes. In the wake of the green revolution, yield gains have been in steady decline, while post-harvest crop losses have increased as a result of insufficiently resourced and uncoordinated efforts to control spoilage throughout global transport and storage networks. This paper focuses on the role that biosecurity is set to play in future food security by preventing both pre- and post-harvest losses, thereby protecting crop yield. We model biosecurity as a food security technology that may complement conventional yield improvement policies if the gains in global farm profits are sufficient to offset the costs of implementation and maintenance. Using phytosanitary measures that slow global spread of the Ug99 strain of wheat stem rust as an example of pre-border biosecurity risk mitigation and combining it with post-border surveillance and invasive alien species control efforts, we estimate global farm profitability may be improved by over US$4.5 billion per annum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Environmental Stewardship Scheme (ESS) provides payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services based on forgone agricultural income. Consequently, farmers with a relatively low opportunity cost of agricultural land will be particularly attracted to apply for entry into the ESS within a given payment region. This article tests whether there exists a significant relationship between Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Scheme entry and agricultural yields. Empirically, HLS participation is found to be negatively related to cereal yields at the farm level. This could be associated with 'auspicious selection' of land into the Scheme, with greater 'value for money' provided by the higher entry of land with lower agricultural forgone income but higher environmental benefit within the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Environmental Stewardship Scheme provides payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services based on foregone agricultural income. This creates a potential incentive compatibility problem which, combined with information asymmetry about farm land potential, can lead to adverse selection of land into the Scheme and therefore a less cost-effective provision of environmental goods and services. However, the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Scheme design includes some features that potentially reduce adverse selection. This paper studies the adverse selection problem of the HLS using a principal-agent framework at the regional level. It is found that, at the regional level, the enrolment of more land from lower payment regions for a given budget constraint has reduced the adverse selection problem through contracting a greater overall area and thus higher overall environmental benefit. In addition, for landscape regions with the same payment rate (i.e. of the same agricultural value), differential weighting of the public demand for environmental goods and services provided by agriculture (measured by weighting an environmental benefit function by the distance to main cities) appears to be reflected in the regulator’s allocation of contracts, thereby also reducing the adverse selection problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper develops a conceptual framework for choosing the most cost-effective intervention along the supply chain to improve food safety. This framework identifies both the initial level of on-farm infection and the potential for new infection post farm-gate as key parameters influencing the relative effectiveness of on-farm and abattoir interventions. In addition, the potential for cost economies of scale in implementing interventions at abattoir compared to on-farm is shown to be a further factor determining the relative cost-effectiveness of these interventions. Overall, it is suggested by the analysis in this paper that successful abattoir interventions will typically be more cost-effective than successful on-farm interventions. These findings are consistent with existing case study evidence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the issue of incentive compatibility within environmental stewardship schemes, where incentive payments to farmers to provide environmental goods and services are based on foregone agricultural income. The particular focus of the paper is land heterogeneity, either of agricultural or environmental value, leading to divergence between the actual and socially optimal level of provision of environmental goods and services. Given land heterogeneity, such goods and services are likely to be systematically over- or under-provided in response to a flat rate payment for income foregone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper analyses the issue of balancing the gains from trade with the risk of pest and disease transference. Two decision frameworks for determining whether or not to permit trade in a potentially invasive species-carrying good are presented. The first considers only the potential production losses resulting from an invasive species entering through a trade pathway, as is prescribed by WTO compliance. The second is a unilateral welfare-maximising approach which considers the consumer gains from trade, the loss of domestic producers’ market share and expected damage from the invasive species. It is shown that these alternative decision frameworks can be reconciled such that they produce the same outcome regarding whether or not trade is to be permitted. The key parameters which influence these decisions are also highlighted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the role of targeting in the context of agri-environmental schemes involving monitoring and penalties. By separating participants into a target and a non- target group the aim of targeting is to reduce the moral hazard problem. The paper analyses three approaches to targeting which have different implications for the level of monitoring resources and the focus is on reducing the extent of cheating by participants in the non- target group. By complementing the adoption of targeting with appropriate adjustments to the monitoring/penalty parameters, it is shown how such an approach can exploit the risk aversion of participants to completely eliminate cheating by those participants in the non-target group. The implementation of such a system of targeting is discussed in the context of existing agri-environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the policy trend of exposing European Union farmers to more market risk by reducing price support, this paper evaluates the compensation required by EU cereal growers to accept the complete removal of price support. Additional considerations are whether this policy change also includes the removal of set-aside, or features only a partial removal of price support. A model is developed which captures the main on- and off-farm factors influencing grower perceptions of the impact of this policy change. This model is subjected to a numerical analysis which shows that divergent assessments of the expected profitability of releasing to production land previously set-aside mean growers are unlikely to agree whether compensation is even required. It is concluded that the retention of set-aside for environmental purposes is likely to mean growers are more united in their perception of the need for, and amount of, compensation to accept the removal of price support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study that examined the effects of stress management and relaxation training techniques on indoor rock climbing performance. Methodology of the study; Results and discussion on the study.

This paper presents a method of quantifying variation in quality in an amenity as a component of an hedonic property amenity valuation. The paper considers the residential land amenity of an ocean view, a situation where there is typically substantial variation in the quality of the view between sites. The method is effectively a scoring system based on three sub-characteristics of the ocean view. It is illustrated by application to a coastal housing subdivision in Western Australia. The results provide an estimate of the increase in the sale price of a site attributable to the quality of the site's ocean view. The method has a potential role in coastal land use management decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined which characteristics of dogs available at a large rehoming organization in the United Kingdom influenced prospective adopters' choices. The revealed preference data used to model “consumer” choice were from the Dogs Trust rehoming web pages. The analysis of the probability of adoption involved a logistic regression model with multiple imputation. The factors that had a significant impact on the adopters' choices were age, size, pedigree status, coat length, behavior (e.g., fearfulness, adjustment issues), friendliness (toward children, dogs, and other pets), and training. This study offers a quantitative analysis of adopters' preferences that could prove to be useful for shelter personnel and researchers interested in the analysis of companion animal markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A perennial issue for land use policy is the evaluation of landscape biodiversity and the associated cost effectiveness of any biodiversity conservation policy actions. Based on the CUA methodology as applied to species conservation, this paper develops a methodology for evaluating the impact on habitats of alternative landscape management scenarios. The method incorporates three dimensions of habitats, quantity change, quality change and relative scarcity, and is illustrated in relation to the alternative landscape management scenarios for the Scottish Highlands (Cairngorms) study area of the BioScene project. The results demonstrate the value of the method for evaluating biodiversity conservation policies through their impact on habitats. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pre-loads high in protein, as compared to carbohydrate and fat, produce greater satiety and reduce food intake after a fixed time interval. This study investigated the effect of macronutrient composition on spontaneous eating behaviour. On four separate occasions, 16 fasted, healthy, non-obese men, blinded to the true purpose of the study, consumed iso-energetic (∼3 MJ) yoghurt-based pre-loads of equivalent weight (∼0.5 kg), high in fat (40%) [HF], carbohydrate (60%) [HC] or protein (29%) [HP], and no pre-load in a randomized, single-blind fashion. Subjects ate at will from a selection of food items for the remainder of the day (7 h) with the time of food requests (h) and energy content (kJ) and macronutrient distribution (%) of food eaten recorded. The three pre-loads delayed the first spontaneous request for food by 1.5–1.8 h relative to no pre-load. Total spontaneous food intake was suppressed 29% [HP], 20% [HF] and 17% [HC] by the pre-loads. Neither the amount of food eaten per spontaneous eating episode, nor the spontaneous eating frequency differed statistically following ingestion of the different pre-loads or no pre-load. In this study, in subjects who were free to choose when as well as how much they ate, a high-protein pre-load exerted similar effects on satiety as did iso-energetic high-fat and high-carbohydrate pre-loads. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Focuses on a study which surveyed the effects of high-stakes testing on elementary school art, music, and physical education (AMPE) in Virginia. Concept behind the Virginia Standards of Learning tests; Results of the survey; Implications of the survey to the value of AMPE in children.