Agro‐Food Preferences in the EU's GSP Scheme: An Analysis of Changes Between 2004 and 2006

This article examines the extent to which the 2006 revisions to the EU's Generalised System of Preferences improved market‐access opportunities for developing‐country agro‐food exports. It shows that they resulted in only a slight increase in the percentage preferential margin, but that there has been a significant increase in the value of preferential trade and of the preferential margin enjoyed by exporters. This was accompanied by changes in the ranking of beneficiaries. Countries such as China, Brazil, Argentina, India and South Africa maintained their significant shares of GSP agro‐food exports, but other countries such as Thailand and Vietnam have now emerged as major GSP beneficiaries.     

Housing,Demographic Change and the Private Rental Sector

Housing policy and provision in Australia are primarily oriented towards meeting the needs of the traditional nuclear family household. Households who cannot afford to buy their own home and are not eligible for public housing have no alternative but to rent in the private sector. Many of these households are single headed, groups, unemployed or on low-incomes. However, even in the private rental sector family households are favoured by landlords and estate agents and gain access to the better standard accommodation. Flexible and innovative policies in the public sector are urgently needed to meet the housing needs of the growing number of non-nuclear family households.     

Personality Correlates of Risk Perception

The aim of the present study was to systematically examine the variations of the effects of (1) transitional anxiety states and enduring anxiety dispositions, and (2) worldviews (hierarchic, egalitarian, individualist, and fatalist), as a function of the type of hazard considered. Ten risk factors were identified. Transitional anxiety contributed significantly to the prediction of four of these risk factors. The more anxious the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Common Individual Hazards, Pollutants, and Outdoor Activities factors, and the lower were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor. Enduring anxiety contributed significantly to the prediction of the Psychotropic Drugs factor. The more anxious the respondents, the lower were their scores. The four worldview factors contributed significantly to the prediction of three of these risk factors. The more fatalistic the respondents, the lower were their scores for the Pollutants factor, and the higher were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor; the more egalitarian the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Pollutants factor; the more hierarchic the respondents, the lower were their scores for the Public Transportation and Energy Production factor; and the more individualistic the respondents, the higher were their scores for the Pollutants and Deviance, Sex, and Addiction factors.     

An Evaluation of Three Representative Multimedia Models Used to Support Cleanup Decision-Making at Hazardous, Mixed, and Radioactive Waste Sites

The decision process involved in cleaning sites contaminated with hazardous, mixed, and radioactive materials is supported often by results obtained from computer models. These results provide limits within which a decision-maker can judge the importance of individual transport and fate processes, and the likely outcome of alternative cleanup strategies. The transport of hazardous materials may occur predominately through one particular pathway but, more often, actual or potential transport must be evaluated across several pathways and media. Multimedia models are designed to simulate the transport of contaminants from a source to a receptor through more than one environmental pathway. Three such multimedia models are reviewed here: MEPAS, MMSOILS, and PRESTO-EPA-CPG. The reviews are based on documentation provided with the software, on published reviews, on personal interviews with the model developers, and on model summaries extracted from computer databases and expert systems. The three models are reviewed within the context of specific media components: air, surface water, ground water, and food chain. Additional sections evaluate the way that these three models calculate human exposure and dose and how they report uncertainty. Special emphasis is placed on how each model handles radio-nuclide transport within specific media. For the purpose of simulating the transport, fate and effects of radioactive contaminants through more than one pathway, both MEPAS and PRESTO-EPA-CPG are adequate for screening studies; MMSOILS only handles nonradioactive substances and must be modified before it can be used in these same applications. Of the three models, MEPAS is the most versatile, especially if the user needs to model the transport, fate, and effects of hazardous and radioactive contaminants.     

The trouble with 'inclusion': a case study of the faith zone at the Millennium Dome

Some sociologists of religion would argue that there has been a move away from ‘religion’, in terms of institutionalised dogmas and established corporate ways of believing, towards ‘spiritualities of life’ where the emphasis lies on the personal, the individual and the experiential ( Heelas, 2002 ; Wuthnow, 2001 ). Given the evidence for the apparent popularity of spirituality in contemporary Western society, it is surprising that between 1996 and 2000, the Zone concerned with religion at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich was re‐named from‘The Spirit Zone’to‘The Faith Zone’. A range of political, economic and religious interests lay behind the Zone’s re‐naming, and both the name (and the content) changed to reflect ‘religion’ rather than ‘spirituality’. The process of constructing the Zone thus moved in a diametrically opposite direction to some of the trends associated with religious belief in modern Britain. An investigation of the dynamics behind the construction of the Faith Zone at the Dome provides an opportunity to evaluate what ‘counted’ as religion ( Beckford, 2003 ) at a specific time and context in British society. The paper also shows that behind the Labour Government rhetoric of ‘inclusion’, various dimensions of spiritual belief and activity in Britain are excluded from the public sphere. When it comes to religion, taken‐for‐granted criteria operate – resulting in the prioritisation of the official, the ‘representative’, the ‘respectable’, and ‘the unified’ over the unofficial, the deviant, the private, and the contested. This paper looks at the struggles and the conditions associated with the idea and the policy of inclusion in relation to religion in modern Britain, using the Faith Zone at the Dome as a case study.     

Nonparametric prediction of spatial multivariate data

This paper investigates a nonparametric spatial predictor of a stationary multidimensional spatial process observed over a rectangular domain. The proposed predictor depends on two kernels in order to control both the distance between observations and that between spatial locations. The uniform almost complete consistency and the asymptotic normality of the kernel predictor are obtained when the sample considered is an alpha-mixing sequence. Numerical studies were carried out in order to illustrate the behaviour of our methodology both for simulated data and for an environmental data set.     

Rhetoric and Etiological Beliefs About Sexuality: Reader Responses to Cynthia Nixon’s New York Times Interview

In 2012, the U.S. actress Cynthia Nixon was quoted in the New York Times Magazine as having stated that “for me, it [being gay] is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” The interview attracted international media attention and public criticism by lesbian and gay activists. This article suggests a rhetorical approach to understanding etiological beliefs and provides a discursive analysis of 198 online comments by readers of Pink News, a gay news Web site that reported on Nixon’s controversial interview. This article explores common arguments used in readers’ comments about Nixon and examines the rhetorical construction of sexuality. The analysis examines three themes within the data. First, biological essentialism was treated by many readers as common knowledge; second, readers suggested that only bisexuals have “choice”; and, third, it was suggested by both Nixon’s critics and her supporters that counterarguments colluded with homophobia. The article suggests that there is an ideological dilemma whereby both “born-this-way” and “choice” arguments can be understood as colluding with anti-gay prejudice.