As the new school year ramps up, teachers and parents need to be reminded of a well-kept secret: Across all grade levels and academic subjects, girls earn higher grades than boys. Not just in the United States, but across the globe, in countries as far afield as Norway and Hong Kong.   This finding is reflected in a recent study by psychology professors Daniel and Susan Voyer at the University of New Brunswick. The Voyers based their results on a meta-analysis of 369 studies involving the academic grades of over one million boys and girls from 30 different nations. The findings are unquestionably robust: Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields where boys are thought to surpass them. Read more

An election is usually a competition between different parties.[5] Some examples of political parties worldwide are: the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the Democratic Party (D) in the United States, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany and the Indian National Congress in India which has the highest number of political parties in the world (2546 political parties) [6]. Politics is a multifaceted word. It has a set of fairly specific meanings that are descriptive and nonjudgmental (such as "the art or science of government" and "political principles"), but does often colloquially carry a negative connotation.[1][7][8] The word has been used negatively for many years: the British national anthem as published in 1745 calls on God to "Confound their politics",[9] and the phrase "play politics", for example, has been in use since at least 1853, when abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared: "We do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us."[10] A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries.[11][12][13][14][15] Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level. During the past decade two tendencies (1.Concern for theoretical explication and methodological rigor, and 2. The emphasis on field studies of the “emerging,” “new,” and “non-Western” nations) made it possible to overlook comparative politics. [16] Read more

Consumers want more control over what they eat, but also want to be adventurous with their meal choices at home. Online restaurants, where the startup prepares, cooks and delivers meals to customers, are opening access to new types of foods for consumers to enjoy, often with a particular angle or theme like a special diet or vegan menu. In the same category, we include meal kit companies that prepare pre-portioned ingredients for consumers to cook at home. Read more

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Ella is a small town in the Badulla District of Uva Province, Sri Lanka governed by an Urban Council. It is approximately 200 kilometres east of Colombo and is situated at an elevation of 1,041 metres above sea level. The area has a rich bio-diversity, dense with numerous varieties of flora and fauna Read more

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241757597_Implications_of_agri-food_standards_for_Sri_Lanka_Case_studies_of_tea_and_fisheries_export_industries     Dear Colleagues, Agri-food economies are socio-technical systems converting natural resources into food and ecosystem services and distributing them to consumers mainly through supply chains and markets. This book considers agri-food economies as “economies on their own” distinct to economies in general since they deliver food, which is indispensable for the continuity and quality of human life, and they are located at the complex interface between nature and society. Today, technological global agri-food economies dominated by vertically integrated, large enterprises are failing in meeting the challenge of feeding a growing global population within the limits of “planetary boundaries” and they are characterized by a “triple fracture” between agri-food economies and their three constitutive elements: nature, consumers and producers. In parallel to this crisis, new eco-ethical driven agri-food economies are built around new farming and food distribution practices. By exploring these new emerging agri-food economies in both developing and developed countries, this book develops a multidisciplinary discussion on the re-construction of local and regional agri-food economies as a solution to existing global agri-food economy crises. At a farm level, in contrast with the specialization and productivism of the modernized farming model, new farming practices grounded in ecological and biocultural principles and multifunctional diversification have emerged. At the supply chain and market level, in the last twenty years, we have witnessed the emergence of alternative food networks (AFNs) and/or short food supply chains (SFSCs,): alternative arrangements to the more standardized or conventional food supply and distribution chains, which relies on the notions of ‘ diversity’ ‘equity’ ‘transparency’, ‘quality’, ‘place’, and ‘sustainability’ and ‘community’. In alterity to the deterritorialization of the global agro-industrial food chain, the reterritorialization processes of AFNs/SFSCs moves towards food re-localization and re-socialization. Read more