Publications

Agricultural productions are very much influenced by weather conditions. Favorable weather significantly boosts productions while unfavorable weather may cause extensive losses. So agriculture needs agro meteorological models to predict and forecast crop yields and productions, to support decision and to minimize environmental costs of agriculture with short-term consequences (quality of products, fertilization:N, Pesticide) and outputs or inputs with long-term consequences (reduction of water resources, modifications of climate).

The new precariousness of the welfare state and the growing influence of the market, are challenging children’s life worlds, their everyday lives in families, schools, kindergartens and leisure areas. Demographic changes are leaving children vulnerable in the competition for public resources, access to space and use of time. Children are marginal at the big stage of political and economic actors. They do not have strong interest group to defend their rights to resources. But societies can not do without children’s contributions to society. Broad social changes call for deeper analyses as to the cultural blindness to children’s input to the societal fabric, and their consequences for children. These country studies explore children’s welfare from available sources across European countries.

The third international conference, Postharvest Unlimited 2008, organized by the Leibniz-Institute for Agricultural Engineering Postdam-Bornim, ATB under the auspices of COST Action 924 “Enhancement and Preservation of Quality and Health Promoting Components in Fresh Fruits and Vegetables” and ISHS was held at Humboldt Universät zu Berlin on 4-7 November 2008. Keynote speakers and authors of selected contributed oral presentations were given the opportunity to submit a manuscript for publication.