Life Sciences Commons^™

The Very Basics Of Sustainability - An Alternative Viewpoint (Slides With Audio) (Large File! To Speed Up Download, Right-Click On "Download" Link To Save To Own Pc.), Jim Mcgovern

Other resources

This presentation sets out the very basics of ‘sustainability’, although a definition of sustainability is not attempted. Some of the very basics are the context in which the Earth and humankind exist in space and time, the Earth’s climate, the Earth’s population and humankind’s options and choices. The author advocates keeping an open mind on all available options, including the use of oil, gas, coal, tar sands, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear power etc., as well as the technologies that are more widely considered ‘green’. The author also argues that, in addressing the challenges that humankind faces, globally concerted effort …

Crop Bioengineering: Enormous Potential For Catalyzing International Development, Peter Gregory, Stanley P. Kowalski

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Bioengineering provides unique and dramatic opportunities for crop improvement. It can be used to develop crop varieties that would otherwise be unavailable and can facilitate much faster and more precise ways of developing improved varieties. It can help to increase yields and reliability and thus reduce food costs for the consumer while helping to control input costs for farmers through reduced applications of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer.

The extent to which this will be achieved depends on how effectively the global scientific community – including both the public and private sectors – can cooperate in harnessing the power of …

Research Choice And Finance In University Bioscience, David E. Ervin, Steven T. Buccola, Hui Yang

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Academic bioscience's rising importance for downstream technology and growing private sector relationships have evoked substantial policy attention. We contribute to the scrutiny by asking how university bioscientists design and finance their research, with particular attention to the mutuality of research portfolio choice and funding success. The analysis requires consideration of other major influences on academic science, including scientific norms, human capital, and institutional environment. Drawing on a national survey of university bioscientists, we find that public financial support encourages more basic investigation and private support encourages more applied investigation. Yet downstream research is only moderately more excludable than upstream. Once …

A Neuroeconomic Theory Of The Decision Process, John Dickhaut, Aldo Rustichini, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Publications

We develop a neuronal theory of the choice process (NTCP), which takes a subject from the moment in which two options are presented to the selection of one of the two. The theory is based on an optimal signal detection, which generalizes the signal detection theory by adding the choice of effort as optimal choice for a given informational value of the signal for every effort level and a cost of effort. NTCP predicts the choice made as a stochastic choice: That is, as a probability distribution over two options in a set, the level of effort provided, the error …

The Corporate Agenda For Environmental Property Rights, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Market and property-rights based approaches to environmental problems have been heavily promoted by conservative think tanks. Consequently policies such as emissions trading, water markets, tradeable fishing quotas and conservation banking pervade environmental policy in English speaking nations. They have enabled the corporate neo-liberal agenda of deregulation, privatisation and an unconstrained market to be dressed up as an environmental virtue. This market-faith based approach is proving to be largely ineffective at protecting the environment and also inequitable.