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Ants possess properties that can be used to optimize plant production in agricultural systems. Ant services can be herbivore and pathogen protection and fertilization of their plant partners. They may, however, also harm plants by facilitating ant-attended herbivorous homopterans. To assess whether wood ants can be used in IPM-systems to improve apple production, we transplanted wood ants into a Danish apple plantation and tested whether ants (i) reduced the number of herbivores, (ii) led to higher amounts of leaf nutrients, (iii) controlled apple pathogens, (iv) increased homopteran abundance and (iv) whether these effects affected apple yields. During a two year study, we found that the wood ants significantly reduced the numbers of winter moth larvae, increased magnesium content in apple leaves (but did not affect 10 other nutrients), reduced the number of apples infected with apple brown rot and apple scab (on one apple variety) and increased aphid infections. In the first year, this led to higher apple production on ant trees, whereas ants had no effect on yields in the second year. It was evident that ants provided both services and disservices. If mutualistic ant-homopteran interactions can be disrupted, this would favor plant growth and open for the use of wood ants in sustainable plant management. We discuss how this may be accomplished. Alternatively, ants may be used short term to knock down pest outbreaks (before building up homopteran populations) or used in crops that do not host ant-attended homopterans.

Dette paper beskriver det grundlag omkring mål, planer og proces, som er anvendt i arbejdet med Storstrøms Amts vejsektorplan. Hensigten er, at vejsektorplanen både i dag og senere skal være et helhedpræget og aktuelt grundlag for amtets prioritering af investeringerne i landevejene. For vejområdet er formuleret seks hovedmål under følgende overskrifter: · Trafiksikkerhed· Miljø· Fremkommelighed· Vejtilstand· Service· Tilgængelighed Disse hovedmål sigter mod at "sætte brugeren i centrum". I vejplanlægningen fastlægges en række mere specifikke delmål for de forskellige behov hos brugerne, som amtet ønsker at tilgodese. Gennem en række delplaner tilstræbes en helhed i vejsektorplanens prioritering af de forskellige virkemidler på landevejene. Vejsektorplanen beskriver forudsætninger, metoder og mål for amtets vejplanlægning. Delplanernes tekniske prioritering af projekter sammenfattes, og der beskrives en politisk prioritering af budgettet på tværs af delplanerne. Vejsektorplanen angiver perspektiverne for indsats på 12 års sigt og foreslår investeringer i en 4 års budgetoverslagsperiode som udgangspunkt for den årlige handlingsplan. For at vejplanlægningen til stadighed kan være et aktuelt grundlag for amtets prioritering af projekter er det nødvendigt med mellemrum at opdatere delplanerne og vejsektorplanen. I sammenhæng med opdateringen kan der vurderes målopfyldelse og behov for anvendelse af nye strategier eller virkemidler. Vejsektorplanen revideres hvert 4. år i koordination med regionplanen og således, at der i hver amtsrådsperiode kan drøftes nye problemstillinger og mål for vejområdet.

Borgeres til- og fravalg i velfærdsstaten har store konsekvenser for kvaliteten og indretningen af den offentlige service. Derfor er det også vigtigt for politikere og beslutningstagere at vide, hvilke faktorer der har indflydelse på borgernes til- og fravalg, og hvordan borgerne afvejer dem mod hinanden. Vi undersøger disse spørgsmål i en repræsentativ spørgeskemaundersøgelse, hvor vi beder respondenterne tage stilling til daginstitutionsvalg i et conjoint eksperiment. Resultaterne viser, at de inkluderede faktorer alle har meningsfulde effekter på sandsynligheden for valget af en daginstitution. Dog ser information om, hvorvidt daginstitutionen er offentlig eller privat/selvejende, ikke ud til at have nogen indflydelse. Desuden ser vi på, om en højere andel af uddannede pædagoger kan dæmpe den negative effekt af lave normeringer – det viser sig ikke at være tilfældet.

In modern welfare states, citizens' choice of service providers is consequential for both service quality and the design of public services. Politicians and other central decision makers have a substantial interest in understanding how different factors affect citizens' choice of service and how citizens make trade-offs between these factors. Using a conjoint experiment on a representative sample of Danish citizens, we study the importance of different organizational factors in the choice of daycare provider. Our results show that all included factors have meaningful effects on the propensity to choose a given provider. However, information about public vs. private ownership does not seem to have an impact on service choice. Additionally, we study whether having a high proportion of staff with pedagogical education can offset the negative impact of a poor staff to child ratio – this turns out not to be the case.

AbstractCitizen coproduction has long been recognized as a lever to maintain service quality in times of service decline, but the key notion that citizens will "pitch in" and coproduce in times of service decline has undergone little empirical scrutiny. Using elderly care in Denmark as empirical setting, we conduct a survey experiment with a two‐by‐two factorial design in a representative sample of elderly citizens (n = 864) to evaluate the effects of a true service decline cue (Treatment 1) and of task‐specific encouragements (Treatment 2) on willingness to coproduce. We leverage the distinction between core and complementary tasks to hypothesize that service decline mostly affects coproduction of core tasks, and that this motivation can be increased with task‐specific encouragement. We find evidence that a service decline cue increases the willingness to coproduce core tasks, but no evidence of an additional effect of the task‐specific encouragement.

Purpose: Large data amounts are required in an LCA, but often, site-specific data are missing and less representative surrogate data must be used to fill data gaps. No standardized rules exist on how to address data gaps and process completeness. We suggest a systematic evaluation of process completeness, identification of data gaps, and application of surrogate values to fill the gaps. The study focus on foreground process data. Methods: A solid waste management (SWM) scenario was used to illustrate the suggested method. The expected input and output flows in a waste incineration model were identified based on legislation and expert judgment, after which process completeness scores were calculated and missing flows identified. To illustrate the use of different types of surrogate data to fill data gaps, data gaps were selected for 16 different parameters in five SWM processes. We compared the global warming potential (GWP) from using surrogate data, and from leaving the gap, to identify the data gaps where representative surrogate data should be used. Results and discussion: The completeness score for the material inputs to waste incineration was 78%, and the missing flows were auxiliary fuels and precipitation chemicals. The completeness score for air emissions were between 38 and 50% with and without expert judgment. If only greenhouse gases were considered (CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O), the completeness score would be 67%. Applying weighting factors according to the greenhouse gas contribution in the USA gave a completeness score of 94%. The system-wide data gaps, where representative surrogate data should be applied, were the CH 4 release from composting; electricity generation efficiency of incineration; recovery efficiencies at a material recovery facility; and composition of the plastic, metal, and paper fractions in the household waste; in these cases, leaving the gap changed the GWP results by > 5%. Conclusions: Completeness evaluation should take into account the relevance and importance of flows; ...