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Economic research has not assessed the relationship between physical exercise and protein consumption, which is frequently discussed across media platforms. This study uses news articles related to physical exercise to construct fitness-related media indices. Incorporating these indices and national prices and disappearance for meat from 1993 to 2022, a Rotterdam demand model was used to estimate news media elasticities. We find little evidence that news media attention to physical exercise has direct or spillover effects on beef, pork, or chicken consumption. Further, news media information does not shift demand for food into or out of the aggregate meat complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy is frequently characterised as a sub-discipline of political science which is practically oriented and concerned with what government does and does not do. Further, policy analysis can also be characterised as concerned with either the analysis 'of policy' or 'for policy'. This clearly has implications for the design and delivery of public policy courses. More broadly, higher education in Australia, like elsewhere, faces calls to ensure that students graduate with a range of skills and aptitudes that make them 'job ready' and able to engage with 'real world problems'. One of the ways in which this can be pursued is through industry engagement. However, limited research has been undertaken regarding what this might entail or how it can be pursued. Accordingly, in this paper we explore these issues by: (a) situating engagement within the field of public policy; (b) reviewing how the changing context of higher education, with a particular focus on the drivers and rationale for greater engagement with industry, intersects with the teaching of public policy; and (c) providing a framework which helps to clarify the different modes, potential and risks associated with industry engagement.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) 2030 rely on healthy ecosystems providing a multitude of benefits and services for a sustainable society. Many SDG goals are cross-cutting and attaining these is highly reliant on policy coherence. Coherent policy settings enhance the synergies between goals and minimise disproportionate trade-offs. However, research indicates policy coherence and its implications for achieving SDGs is a neglected topic in the global south, particularly the least developed countries (LDCs). Using the hydropower development policy in Nepal as a case, this article employs a refined coherence analysis framework to assess how coherently the concept of ecosystem services (ES) is considered in 20 policy documents. The findings reveal a lack of coherent consideration of the ES concept and implementation gaps. This improves knowledge about an understudied topic in the global south and provides a tool to evaluate policy coherence that can be applied across sectors and scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nine years of experience teaching economics in the Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan provides knowledge on the nuances and challenges of teaching economics across cultures. Particular categories and difficulties are presented with some examples of how to address them. Conclusions and findings are used to form general guiding principles for teaching economics in the increasingly diverse US classroom. The principles offered in the paper are valuable to English speakers providing economic teaching and training in post-Soviet nations and, more broadly, to anyone teaching economics across cultures. Finally, suggestions based these principles are offered to encourage all professors of economics to carefully consider language, illustrations, diversity of views regarding economics and the multi-cultural nature of university classrooms to better relate to students and be more effective teachers.

This article documents the experiences of three early career academics trying to establish a network of early career academics (ECAs) in a middle-ranked university in Australia. The changing context of academia means that ECAs face considerable challenges in understanding and negotiating effective career paths. Some of the issues encountered include insecure employment arrangements; unclear and shifting expectations; heavy workloads and competing demands; and conflicting experiences around the collegiate culture of academia. As research and teaching institutions, universities must ensure the ongoing development of new academics. While there is a growing interest in exploring the issues confronted by new academics, much remains to be done to better understand, and improve, the pathways of academic development. To this end we reflect on our efforts to establish an ECA network that aimed to enhance professional development, facilitate an improved research culture and establish an informal peer support network. We did so through establishing an online presence for sharing information, hosting a series of professional development seminars and hosting a 2.5 day writing retreat. Our experiences suggest that, while efforts to enhance the capacity of ECAs are worthwhile, the very same pressures that our network was attempting to address were simultaneously creating barriers to ECA involvement in the network and its activities.

Livestock Mandatory Price reporting, enacted to increase market transparency, has been in place for more than 20 years. However, immense structural change in cattle and beef markets has challenged market information over that time. Large variation present in cattle transaction prices, especially those in the Formula purchases category, on any given day has made traditionally United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)‐reported weighted‐average prices less meaningful. Using nearly 6 years of The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 transactions data from USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS), we demonstrate use of hedonic modeling to facilitate price reporting. While the models show promise to provide useful information, they reveal substantial weaknesses associated with current transaction information collected by USDA from packers. We offer suggestions for improved data collection which would make hedonic modeling of transactions prices a more valuable tool to increase usefulness of reported market prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity decline undermines the conditions for life on Earth resulting in calls for transformative governance of biodiversity. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, national biodiversity strategies provide the primary mechanism through which governments demonstrate their conservation efforts. With many countries due to develop new strategies under the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, it is timely to assess existing ones to identify policy design elements that could be 'ratcheted up' to meet the transformative agenda. This article analyzes and compares the policy designs of national biodiversity strategies in Australia, France and Sweden. We cover problem framing, policy goals, targeted groups, implementing agents, and policy instruments, to draw lessons on how national strategies can be designed to further support transformation of biodiversity governance. We identify elements in these strategies that can be used to inspire future ones: a negotiated framing of biodiversity and participatory processes in France, nested and integrated goals, targets and measures in Sweden, and an engagement with indigenous knowledge in Australia. However, to bring about transformative change, the analysis also shows the need for novel and fundamental re-designs to successfully target indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, shift power relations, and make biodiversity conservation a priority rather than an option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) began publishing formula base price information in August 2021. Considerable variation in the types of cattle priced via formula has raised questions about the level of base price transparency that can be gleaned from formula base price reports. This study employs 6 years of transactions to estimate hedonic models assessing the capability of existing data to describe variation in formula base prices. Results suggest factors beyond those reported to USDA AMS by packers influence base prices. We offer suggestions for improved data collection to make hedonic modeling of base prices more effective for reporting market information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban greening is attracting considerable research and practical attention for its contributions to conserving biodiversity, mitigating urban heat and enhancing the liveability and sustainability of cities and urban areas. Much of the urban greening research is concentrated on major cities, with little focus on the needs and experiences with urban greening in regional cities and towns. This paper addresses this by presenting a case study of an urban greening project, 'Naturally Cooler Towns', focused on regional towns in north-east Victoria, Australia. The project was undertaken by the Goulburn Murray Climate Alliance, a regional alliance of local governments, catchment management authorities and a state government department. As the region faces increasing temperatures and impacts of more frequent heatwaves, the project aimed to review tree management practices and identify opportunities for increasing canopy cover with appropriate species for 'climate adapted street trees'. We examine how urban greening is planned and implemented in these towns, and the roles of the regional alliance in providing a forum for collaborative adaptive governance. The regional alliance plays a key role as an intermediary facilitating approaches that demonstrate situatedness: credibility, salience and legitimacy. The paper contributes towards increased understandings of urban greening approaches beyond the major cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00511.x Byline: Kate Crowley (1), Brian Coffey (2) Keywords: sustainability; new governance, state planning; green planning Abstract: Bridgman and Davis (2000:91) have argued that 'ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives'. This article compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro-policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless, both plans have the capacity to 'green' state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro-policy setting. The article encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re-engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Tasmania (2)University of Queensland

There is a growing recognition of the complexity of environmental issues and acceptance of the value of more integrated approaches to address them. Evidence of progress with the development of more integrated approaches is however less clear cut. Within this context, this paper explores how a more integrated approach to natural resource management at a state government level could be progressed. Using recent experience in Victoria as a focus, this paper provides an overview of environment and natural resources issues confronting the state, highlights why integration is an important element of any response, and outlines the current policy and organisational context. Possible elements of a state-wide policy framework for more integrated natural resource management across a state government organisation are also outlined and discussed.

We hypothesized that, in patients with acute severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) who recover basic language function, speech-evoked blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) responses within the canonical language network increase over the first 6 months post-injury. We conducted a prospective, longitudinal fMRI pilot study of adults with acute severe TBI admitted to the intensive care unit. We also enrolled age- and sex-matched healthy subjects. We evaluated BOLD signal in bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) regions of interest acutely and approximately 6 months post-injury. Given evidence that regions outside the canonical language network contribute to language processing, we also performed exploratory whole-brain analyses. Of the 16 patients enrolled, eight returned for follow-up fMRI, all of whom recovered basic language function. We observed speech-evoked longitudinal BOLD increases in the left STG, but not in the right STG, right IFG, or left IFG. Whole-brain analysis revealed increases in the right supramarginal and middle temporal gyri but no differences between patients and healthy subjects (n = 16). This pilot study suggests that, in patients with severe TBI who recover llanguage function, speech-evoked responses in bihemispheric language-processing cortex reemerge by 6 months post-injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]