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With the passing of another world day Against Hunger (on 30 October), it is time to take stock of the state of global hunger. Sadly, Millennium goals are still far from being reached, and over 800 million people suffer from malnutrition in the world. The latest core health indicators from the World

AbstractSince the turn of the century, rubber plantations have been expanding their footprint across Southeast Asia in response to an increasing global demand for rubber products. Between 2000 and 2014, the area cultivated with rubber more than doubled. It is not clear how this major change in the agricultural landscape of Southeast Asia, the main area of rubber production in the world, is affecting land‐use patterns and water resources in the region. Here we use maps of rubber plantations and other croplands in conjunction with a hydrological model and remote sensing analyses to assess land‐use patterns and water resources affected by natural rubber plantations. Results show water requirements of rubber trees are comparable to those of forests but by far exceed those of the other predominant crops and shrubland vegetation with the effect of potentially increasing water scarcity when rubber plantations replace these crops. The expansion of rubber plantations accounts for a 38 km3/yr increase in green water consumption, thereby exacerbating the monthly water scarcity, with an additional 2.4 million people and more than 0.6 Mha facing water scarcity in the driest months as a result of the increase in rubber production. Monthly runoff substantially decreases (by up to 25%) in 14% of the basins where rubber was planted. These results highlight the existence of major land use and hydrological impacts of agricultural development in Southeast Asia that affect the local environment and rural communities, calling for a more sustainable management of the limited land and water resources.

Stroke incidence rates in the Mediterranean area are higher compared to northern European countries. In this study, we present the 8-year prospective data from a small rural Sicilian town. This population, consisting of 1351 subjects (622 males and 729 females), is homogeneous for ethnic background with traditional healthy dietary habits and shows low cholesterol mean levels. We found that the risk of stroke was significantly associated with the record of at least one previous neurological symptom (PNS), such as lack of strength, loss of vision or speech or possible drop attacks, and high hematocrit in males, and to high body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR), diabetes, hypertension, high leukocyte count in females. We also documented age-related differences: stroke was associated in younger subjects (age < 65 years) with diabetes, high BMI, high uric acid levels and in older patients (age ≥ 65 years) with high WHR, hypertension, diabetes, PNS, leukocyte count and hematocrit above the 95th percentile. Multivariate analysis demonstrated an independent association between stroke and age, diabetes, leukocyte count, hypertension and PNS. In conclusion, in this rural Sicilian population, the incidence rate of stroke is 1.72 cases per 1000/year in the subjects between 40 and 75 years of age. The risk factors associated with stroke are different in younger and older subjects. Leukocyte count, as an expression of an undergoing inflammatory process, may have a relevant role at least in the elderly. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.

This paper focuses on labour and sexual exploitation faced by Romanian female workers employed in the agricultural sector in Ragusa, Sicily, Italy. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2013 and 2014 with Romanian female farm workers in Ragusa, the paper identifies factors that contribute towards their vulnerability to exploitation. By paying specific attention to the experiences of women who are mothers with dependent children, we look at structural factors that increase their vulnerability and consider how this vulnerability ‘forces’ women into situations whereby they effectively accept and/or submit to abuse. We also highlight how European Union (EU) citizenship does not automatically protect migrants from such abuse. This is important because, as we argue, the mistreatment experienced by participants in this study can be regarded as cases of forced labour and trafficking, based on International Labour Organization (ILO) indicators[1] and the definition of trafficking provided by the Directive 2011/36/EU. For a long time, these cases have mostly been neglected by incompetent authorities or addressed using only repressive and assistentialist approaches. Thus, this paper also investigates the limits and potentialities of the Italian legal framework on trafficking, and the ways local institutions and organisations confront the rights violations occurring in the agricultural sector. We contend that in order to effectively counter these phenomena, labour rights measures and anti-trafficking interventions have to be combined based on a comprehensive approach aimed not only at assisting victims, but also at tackling the structural factors that create their vulnerability.[1] ILO, ‘ILO Indicators of Forced Labour’, International Labour Office, 2012, retrieved 11 August 2015, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_203832.pdf

This study attempts to measure the capacity of the EU geographical certification scheme to positively influence the price of certified products and the incomes of their producers. A comparison of the economic results of two cheese-producing dairy farm enterprises with different business strategies and locations within the Sicilian hinterlands is performed in order to determine the transformation value of each dairy’s sheep milk into pecorino cheese (with and without the Protected Designation of Origin, or PDO, certification) and the related joint products (ricotta). The economic convenience of the total transformation of sheep milk into Pecorino Siciliano PDO and ricotta is also appraised. The results suggest that producing and commercializing Pecorino Siciliano PDO is a promising strategy for differentiating and promoting dairy farm products and improving the financial performance of producers, with foreseeable positive repercussions in the socioeconomically less favored rural areas where they are located.

Land surface temperature (LST) is involved in many land surface processes such as evapotranspiration, net radiation, or air temperature modeling. In this paper we present an improved methodology to retrieve LST from Landsat 4 TM, Landsat 5 TM, and Landsat 7 ETM+ using four atmospheric databases covering different water vapor ranges (from 0 to 8 g cm−2) to build the LST retrieval models and using both water vapor and air temperature as input variables. We also compare this with LST retrievals using only water vapor or only air temperature, as well as with an existing LST retrieval algorithm. In order to validate the results, we have selected 77 Landsat images taken between 2002 and 2006 (Catalonia, northeast of the Iberian Peninsula) and two sources of water vapor (radiosounding data and remote sensing estimations) and air temperature (radiosounding data and air temperature modeling). The best results using radiosounding data are obtained when both air temperature and water vapor are present in the LST retrieval models with a mean RMSE of 0.9 K, followed by only water vapor models with a mean RMSE of 1.5 K and only air temperature models with a mean RMSE of 5.6 K. The results obtained using Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Level 2 water vapor product and at‐satellite‐pass air temperature modeling as input data also show that this kind of input data offers best results, with a mean RMSE of 0.9 K, followed by water vapor models with a mean RMSE of 2.1 K and only air temperature models with a mean RMSE of 5.6 K. Similar errors when using radiosounding or modeled water vapor and air temperature as input data suggest the avoidance of radiosounding data to retrieve LST over extensive areas. Finally, when comparing the presented methodology with another methodology also using water vapor and air temperature as input data, the improvement is of more than 0.5 K.

We conducted a randomized case-control trial to analyze uptake of the insecticide/arcaricide permethrin in wearers of permethrin-impregnated and non-impregnated pants in German forestry. Eighty-two male workers were each equipped for a 16-week period with permethrin-treated (test group) or with non-treated work pants (control group). Pants with or without lining to protect against cuts, obtained from two different distributors, were worn in each group. Urinary permethrin metabolite levels were measured by GC-MS/MS before, during and after wearing of the pants. Permethrin uptake was calculated using additional questionnaire data. In the control group, metabolite levels in the range of environmental background exposure (median: ~0.5 μg/l) were measured. Subjects wearing impregnated pants showed consistently significantly higher exposure levels even before the first use of the pants with a maximum after 1 week of wearing the pants (median: ~12.5 μg/l). Significant differences in internal exposure were found depending on which of the distributors the pants came from. Metabolite levels decreased probably due to permethrin losses associated with laundering the pants. Calculated permethrin uptake is below the value corresponding to the WHO-proposed acceptable daily intake. Based on our data, a marginally increased cancer risk compared with the general population cannot be excluded when wearing impregnated pants over a working-lifetime period.

In this paper, estimation of fibre orientation is studied for fibre systems observable as a blurred greyscale image. The estimation method is based on scaled variograms observed along a set of sampling lines in different directions. The parameters of the orientation distribution are obtained numerically. Simulated data are used to study the statistical properties of the method.