In 1837, Dirichlet proved that there are infinitely many primes in any arithmetic progression in which the terms do not all share a common factor. Modern presentations of the proof are explicitly higher-order, in that they involve quantifying over and summing over Dirichlet characters, which are certain types of functions. The notion of a character is only implicit in Dirichlet’s original proof...

The characteristic features of Japanese agriculture are rice production and its highly mechanized small scale farming system due to the limited land space. Agricultural production system in mechanization has been currently changed from mass production system to flexible manufacturing system, which became already much popular in industrial production one. This can be explained that the target cr...

Sustainability is de®ned as the ability of a system to `continue'. In view of this de®nition, several aspects of the crop protection activity in organic farming are reviewed according to their ability to `continue'. As no absolute measure of sustainability is available, this analysis takes the form of a comparison between organic and conventional crop protection methods. Two elements of crop pr...

During the last century, the changing forms of agriculture drastically influenced many native plant and animal populations. In the efforts to reduce these negative impacts on biodiversity, a number of agricultural enterprises began farming in a more environmentally friendly ways; in addition to conventional farm management, new forms of integrated and organic farming appeared, the latter having...

In agent-based models of land use/cover change (ABM/LUCC), small changes in micro-level decision-making methods used by agents may significantly affect macro-level outcomes. Yet, the implications of choosing a specific decision making model are seldom explored in ABM/LUCC studies. This paper discusses an ABM/LUCC modelling study of smallholder farming households in the Amazonian varzea in Maraj...

The adoption of new technology is a central feature of the transformation of farming systems during the process of economic development. There is a rich tradition of social science research, therefore, on the adoption of new technologies (Evenson and Westphal; Feder, Just and Zilberman). Much of this research has focused on the problem faced by individual farmers as they decide whether to adopt...

Aquaculture activities are embedded in complex social-ecological systems. However, aquaculture development decisions have tended to be driven by revenue generation, failing to account for interactions with the environment and the full value of the benefits derived from services provided by local ecosystems. Trade-offs resulting from changes in ecosystem services provision and associated impacts...

This Article discusses potential policies regarding assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The initial question is whether ARTs should be viewed as private matters or as issues that affect overall social good. The author explains that this question may be answered by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the principles of procreative liberty. He then examines Supreme Court decisions regardi...

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing refers to testing sold directly to consumers via the Internet, television, or other marketing venues without involving health care professionals. As the recent Supreme Court ruling eliminated the patentability of human genes, this rapidly evolving segment in the laboratory testing industry is starting to attract increasing scrutiny by government, scienti...

In a decision having implications for the healthcare, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries, on June 13, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a naturally occurring DNA sequence is not patentable simply because it has been isolated from surrounding genetic material. Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. ___ (2013). The Court observed that Myriad’s claims to n...