The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of Japan＇s agricultural domestic policy since 1995 in the context of the current international negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which has as one aim f...The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of Japan＇s agricultural domestic policy since 1995 in the context of the current international negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which has as one aim further reductions of trade-distorting support among member countries. Apparently, Japan＇s attitude towards agricultural domestic policy reform is one of compliance with the WTO, which requests member countries to reduce their Aggregate Measure of Support （AMS） through trimming trade-distorting （amber box） support and/or transforming traditional-type agricultural subsidies to decoupled-type ones. Japan reduced its amber box support by nearly 80 percent between 1995 and 2000. This drastic reduction is mainly attributable to Japan＇s removal of rice from the amber box in 1998. In addition, following the WTO＇s principle of decoupling, Japan launched an extensive agricultural subsidy reform in 2007. This paper, however, shows the ironical realities of Japanese agricultural policy. Neither a sharp reduction of amber box support nor Japan＇s 2007 reform necessarily means there will be a reduction of trade-distorting effects. On the contrary, the 2007 reform may in fact stimulate domestic rice production.展开更多
Following a period of significant development at the end of the 1990s, with economic growth rates greater than those of the European Union, the Portuguese economy stagnated in 2002 and even declined in 2003. The curre...Following a period of significant development at the end of the 1990s, with economic growth rates greater than those of the European Union, the Portuguese economy stagnated in 2002 and even declined in 2003. The current context of international crisis has just interrupted the fragile growth trend initiated in 2004： In fact, real GDP, which increased by 1.9 percent in 2007, had a growth rate of zero in 2008 and declined by 2.9 percent in 2009. The crisis has abruptly increased the closure of companies and unemployment jumped from 7.3% in the second haft of 2008 to 10.1% in the forth quarter of 2009. Notwithstanding, social dialog was resilient to this situation of economic crisis, as shown by the number of collective agreements negotiated by the social partners, the number of workers covered by collective agreements and the observed increase in real wages. Additionally, social partners have agreed on a reform of the Labour Code. Are this data enough evidence of social concentration on crisis management？ This paper will analyze this issue, giving particular attention to collective bargaining in Portugal and the crisis impact on the industrial relations system and their actors展开更多
The spectroscopy characteristics and the fluorescence lifetime for the chloroplasts isolated from the pseudo ginseng, water hyacinth and spinach plant leaves have been studied by absorption spectra, low temperature st...The spectroscopy characteristics and the fluorescence lifetime for the chloroplasts isolated from the pseudo ginseng, water hyacinth and spinach plant leaves have been studied by absorption spectra, low temperature steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy and single photon counting measurement under the same conditions and by the same methods. The similarity of the absorption spectra for the chloroplasts at room temperature suggests that different plants can efficiently absorb light of the same wavelength. The fluorescence decays in PS II measured at the natural QA state for the chloroplasts have been fitted by a three-exponential kinetic model. The three fluorescence lifetimes are 30, 274 and 805 ps for the pseudo ginseng chloroplast; 138, 521 and 1494 ps for the water hyacinth chloroplast; 197, 465 and 1459 ps for the spinach chloroplast, respectively. The slow lifetime fluorescence component is assigned to a collection of associated light harvesting Chl a/b proteins, the fast lifetime component to the reaction center of PS II and the middle lifetime component to the delay fluorescence of recombination of P+ 680 and Pheo-. The excitation energy conversion efficiency(η) in PS II RC is defined and calculated on the basis of the 20 ps electron transfer time constant model, 60%, 87% and 91% for the pseudo ginseng, water hyacinth and spinach chloroplasts, respectively. This interesting result is in unconformity with what is assumed to be 100% efficiency in PS II RC. Our result in this work stands in line with the 20 ps electron transfer time constant in PS II rather sound and the water hyacinth plant grows slower than the spinach plant does as envisaged on the efficiency. But, our results predict that those plants can perform highly efficient transfer of photo-excitation energy from the light-harvesting pigment system to the reaction center (closely to 100%). The conclusion contained in this paper reveals the plant growth characteristics expressed in the primary processes of photosynthesis and a relationship between a plant growing rate and its spectroscopy characteristics and fluorescence lifetimes, namely, the slower a plant grows, the less excitation energy conversation efficiency used might be anticipated.展开更多
文摘The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of Japan＇s agricultural domestic policy since 1995 in the context of the current international negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which has as one aim further reductions of trade-distorting support among member countries. Apparently, Japan＇s attitude towards agricultural domestic policy reform is one of compliance with the WTO, which requests member countries to reduce their Aggregate Measure of Support （AMS） through trimming trade-distorting （amber box） support and/or transforming traditional-type agricultural subsidies to decoupled-type ones. Japan reduced its amber box support by nearly 80 percent between 1995 and 2000. This drastic reduction is mainly attributable to Japan＇s removal of rice from the amber box in 1998. In addition, following the WTO＇s principle of decoupling, Japan launched an extensive agricultural subsidy reform in 2007. This paper, however, shows the ironical realities of Japanese agricultural policy. Neither a sharp reduction of amber box support nor Japan＇s 2007 reform necessarily means there will be a reduction of trade-distorting effects. On the contrary, the 2007 reform may in fact stimulate domestic rice production.
文摘Following a period of significant development at the end of the 1990s, with economic growth rates greater than those of the European Union, the Portuguese economy stagnated in 2002 and even declined in 2003. The current context of international crisis has just interrupted the fragile growth trend initiated in 2004： In fact, real GDP, which increased by 1.9 percent in 2007, had a growth rate of zero in 2008 and declined by 2.9 percent in 2009. The crisis has abruptly increased the closure of companies and unemployment jumped from 7.3% in the second haft of 2008 to 10.1% in the forth quarter of 2009. Notwithstanding, social dialog was resilient to this situation of economic crisis, as shown by the number of collective agreements negotiated by the social partners, the number of workers covered by collective agreements and the observed increase in real wages. Additionally, social partners have agreed on a reform of the Labour Code. Are this data enough evidence of social concentration on crisis management？ This paper will analyze this issue, giving particular attention to collective bargaining in Portugal and the crisis impact on the industrial relations system and their actors
基金Acknowledgements The authors thank Prof. Xia Zongju in Peking University and Prof. Peng Hangcheng in the Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences for their help in carrying out the single photon counting experiment, and Dr. Lin Su in Photos
文摘The spectroscopy characteristics and the fluorescence lifetime for the chloroplasts isolated from the pseudo ginseng, water hyacinth and spinach plant leaves have been studied by absorption spectra, low temperature steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy and single photon counting measurement under the same conditions and by the same methods. The similarity of the absorption spectra for the chloroplasts at room temperature suggests that different plants can efficiently absorb light of the same wavelength. The fluorescence decays in PS II measured at the natural QA state for the chloroplasts have been fitted by a three-exponential kinetic model. The three fluorescence lifetimes are 30, 274 and 805 ps for the pseudo ginseng chloroplast; 138, 521 and 1494 ps for the water hyacinth chloroplast; 197, 465 and 1459 ps for the spinach chloroplast, respectively. The slow lifetime fluorescence component is assigned to a collection of associated light harvesting Chl a/b proteins, the fast lifetime component to the reaction center of PS II and the middle lifetime component to the delay fluorescence of recombination of P+ 680 and Pheo-. The excitation energy conversion efficiency(η) in PS II RC is defined and calculated on the basis of the 20 ps electron transfer time constant model, 60%, 87% and 91% for the pseudo ginseng, water hyacinth and spinach chloroplasts, respectively. This interesting result is in unconformity with what is assumed to be 100% efficiency in PS II RC. Our result in this work stands in line with the 20 ps electron transfer time constant in PS II rather sound and the water hyacinth plant grows slower than the spinach plant does as envisaged on the efficiency. But, our results predict that those plants can perform highly efficient transfer of photo-excitation energy from the light-harvesting pigment system to the reaction center (closely to 100%). The conclusion contained in this paper reveals the plant growth characteristics expressed in the primary processes of photosynthesis and a relationship between a plant growing rate and its spectroscopy characteristics and fluorescence lifetimes, namely, the slower a plant grows, the less excitation energy conversation efficiency used might be anticipated.
