The articles in this volume: Agricultural Cooperatives in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina: Internal and External Factors Affecting Cooperative Financial Performance Cynthia Barmore Strategies for Agricultural Cooperation in Contemporary China Qiao Li, Jianhua Wang, and Patrick H. Mooney Generic Business Strategies in Greece: Private Food Firms versus Agricultural Cooperatives Helen E. Salavou and Panagiota Sergaki Rural Producer Organizations and Poverty Reduction in Uganda: Are There Gender Disparities in the Distribution of Membership Benefits? Edidah Ampaire, Charles Machethe, and Eliud Birachi From Collectivism to Capitalism: Cultural Change in a Kibbutz Factory in Israel Yaffa Moskovich and Yuval Achouch Journal of Rural Cooperation Home Page

This special issue of Journal of Rural Cooperation has its origin in an eRNAC (electronic Research Network of Agricultural Cooperatives) conference held in Helsinki, Finland, June 14-16, 2012. The general theme of the conference was Cooperative Values in Internationalized Operations. The operations in the agro-food industry are becoming so large that operational areas grow larger than national borders. Many agro-food firms are global. Agricultural cooperatives are obliged to follow the development. However, cooperatives’ internationalization turns out to be problematic. How to deal with members and non-members in different countries? Who is entitled to the residual? Are old principles such as equal treatment and democratic decision-making still applicable? In the process of internationalization the relations between various actors in the cooperative organizations come into focus. In addition to more heterogeneous membership, relations between members and managers and between members and internal as well as external investors financial issues become more complex. Not all those conflicting interests can be managed through economic arguments. Also social factors play a role. Daniela Maria Pozzobon, Decio Zylbersztajn, and Jos Bijman analyze decision-making relations between members and managers. Their starting point is that when democratic costs increase, agency costs of monitoring hired management decrease. The cooperative members’ active participation reduces the costs for monitoring the management. This argument also functions other way around. The research question is: How is a cooperative’s ability to control both democratic and agency costs related to the level of member participation? One finding is that cooperatives are more inclined to reducing the opportunity agency costs (member participation) rather than opportunity democratic costs (e.g. incentive payments to the managers). The horizon problem’s influence on cooperative financing is analyzed by Murray Fulton and Konstantinos Giannakas. The horizon problem has a direct connection to the open membership policy. Upon the establishment of a cooperative the first generation of members may not have an incentive to support the next generation through an open membership policy. The first generation may want the second generation to invest more than they have done themselves. Even though there would be an incentive to restrict new members, the vaguely defined property rights may, however, make an open membership policy plausible. The horizon problem also plays a role in Jeffrey Royer’s analysis of why cooperatives are seldom integrated in down-stream value-added markets. Royer presents a wide range of reasons why access to capital, characteristics in cooperative decision-making and cooperative managers’ behavior prevent cooperatives from expanding their activities to value-added markets. Cooperatives’ limited access to equity capital together with memberships’ riskaversion seem to act as barriers to expansion in down-stream activities, which usually are more capital intensive than up-stream operations. Royer suggests that “member investment in food and agribusiness stocks may provide an effective way to hedge against business risk while capturing some of the benefits of retained ownership without an extension of ownership interest.” Gregory McKee and Ryan Larsen focus on cooperative members’ and managers’ decision-making concerning financing issues. If retained patronage refunds can be regarded as a primary source of capital, the question arises how much to pay to members and how much to reserve for future investments in the cooperative. This issue may create conflicts between members and the management. The authors use member-controlled and manager-controlled variables to analyze the effect on risk, debt and investment behavior. They find that relatively small cooperatives have a larger potential to improve their risk management and optimal borrowing. Fabiana Cherubim Bortoleto and Davi Rogério de Moura Costa examine the meaning of loyalty and social responsibility to agricultural cooperative members. The starting point is the notion that members’ loyalty towards their cooperatives is crucial for cooperative success, and social responsibility is an important factor in increasing the cooperatives’ value from both members’ and external parties’ point of view. The data originates from a sample of Brazilian cooperatives. Results indicate that better capacity to provide services increases members’ loyalty. However, no significant relationship between social responsibility and loyalty is found. Daniel May investigates whether also non-economic drivers influence farmers’ incentives to cooperate. He compares farmers’ incentives to cooperate prior to a major policy reform (stable business environment) and their incentives after it (turbulent business environment). Day finds that the noneconomic drivers influencing willingness to collaborate are different in a stable business environment than in a turbulent one. In a pre-reform environment clarifying joint business goals and objectives influenced to joining together, as well as cooperative being a means to be in a closer contact with suppliers and buyers. In post-reform conditions such factors as cooperation as a means of maintaining or supporting farming life style become important. Tursinbek Sultan and Axel Wolz compare the development of agricultural cooperatives in China and Vietnam after the decollectivization. Compared to the Western world, the development of cooperatives has been different in socialist and former Soviet Union countries. The authors provide a description about newly established cooperatives as well as converted state farms in the environment of farmers’ reluctance and local authorities’ control. Despite of cooperatives’ relatively small role their importance in securing both up- and downstream markets is expected to increase. Writers in this issue: Jerker Nilsson, Petri Ollila, Daniela Maria Pozzobon, Decio Zylbersztajn, Jos Bijman, Murray Fulton, Onstantinos Giannakas, Jeffrey Royer, Gregory McKee, Ryan Larsen, Fabiana Cherubim Bortoleto, Davi Rogério de Moura Costa, Daniel E. May, Tursinbek Sultan and Axel Wolz. Journal of Rural Cooperation Home Page

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he presented the daring argument that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, computers would rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now, in The Singularity is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.

The Journal of Rural Cooperation (JRC) is an interdisciplinary journal focusing on cooperatives and related rural organizations in developed and less developed countries. Topics of particular interest are cooperatives facing trends of globalization and privatization, the web of cooperative-community relationships, and cooperatives as part of such broader systems as mainstream economics, economies in transition, the social economy or related alternative paradigms. Journal of Rural Cooperation Home Page

If everyone who took a course in introductory statistics understood that there is a better chance of doing well and enjoying the subject than winning the jackpot, this book would not have been published and lotteries would be making less. Maybe you have a phobia regarding Statistics and maybe your conception of it is boredom, tedium and incomprehensibility. The book Thinking Differently invites you to reconsider. Statistics helps us understand phenomena in a wide variety of fields. This book presents in a friendly and humorous manner the logic, the intuition and the beauty of Statistics, without delving into mathematical depth. This goal of the book is not a mere transmission of technical details; it aims to impart comprehension and a way of thinking. The book places a strong emphasis on the connection between Statistics and the world, expressed by timely examples from many fields - via detailed applications, through exercises whose solutions appear at the end of the book and by means of pictures and illustrations. Basic statistical concepts, such as "average", are in everyday use. Why, then, is the attitude towards Statistics ambivalent? Why do we have faith in the weather forecast, but regard surveys suspiciously? What is a "statistical fraud"? How do babies come into the world? This book makes an effort to answer the first three questions and to underscore the intricacy of the subject, both its capability and incapability, the misunderstanding of which incurs errors and invites unrealistic expectations.

The Journal of Rural Cooperation (JRC) is an interdisciplinary journal focusing on cooperatives and related rural organizations in developed and less developed countries. Topics of particular interest are cooperatives facing trends of globalization and privatization, the web of cooperative-community relationships, and cooperatives as part of such broader systems as mainstream economics, economies in transition, the social economy or related alternative paradigms. Journal of Rural Cooperation Home Page

Scientific investigation is a cognitive activity, aimed at revealing the truth of nature. Politics is an activity of intent, aimed at realizing specific values derive from subjective judgment. Political activity by scientists is a necessity arising out of the bitter competition over resources. Uncontrolled competition may endanger the ability of science to realize its aims, and will consequently undermine the trust of the society on which its very existence is based. The synthesis between science and politics depends on the interrelationship between daring and humility. Daring is the basis of the drive towards vigorous effort to expose the truth of nature. Humility is the origin of self-discipline and cooperation between individuals. The premise of this book is that recognition of the narrative behind scientific achievements is vital for understanding the scientific enterprise. Besides theoretical discussion the book depicts and interprets case histories relating to the conflict between politics and science: among them, the notebooks of Pasteur, the land of Darwin, the double helix, the understanding of aspirin, lithium and bipolar disorder, and the association between autism and immunization.

Magnetism and Optics is a second book in the series of three. This book is built on the foundations of the 6th Edition of Halliday, Resnick, and Walker’s Fundamentals of Physics. One of primary goals of this book is to help students make sense of the physics they are learning. We cannot achieve this goal if students see physics as a set of disconnected mathematical equations that each apply only to a small number of specific situations. We stress conceptual and qualitative understanding and continually make connections between mathematical equations and conceptual ideas. We also try to build on ideas that students can be expected to already understand, based on the resources they bring from everyday experiences. This text is designed to work with learning strategies such as microcomputer-based labs and interactive lectures that are increasingly being used in physics instruction.

The book is designated for those how are interested in geology and are eager to understand the meaning of landscapes and views, especially in desert areas where rock formations are well exposed, such as the Negev. The Negev lays at the south of Israel and is part of the sub tropical deserts strip. The Northern Negev is characterized by a series of elongated mountain chains, trending north-east. This mountain chains are asymmetric anticlines and are part of the Syrian Arc- a long geological structure that extends from the western Sinai Peninsula at the south, to the Syrian Palmira Mountains at the north. Five east- west long shear zones cross the central part of the Negev. A series of typical strike-slip related structures evolved along those dextral faults, such as domes, half domes, and pull- aparts . The Dead Sea Transform Fault bounds the Negev at the east; The international border with Egypt is the western border; The Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba golf) delineates the Negev at the south, and the Be'er Sheva Vvalley lays at its northern border. The Igneous rocks of the Precambrian Arabo - Nubian shield build the basement of the stratigraphic column. The Arabo -Nubian shield is composed of three rock complexes: The complex of the archaic metamorphic rocks, the magmatic complex, and the volcanic conglomeratic complex. A relatively thin, up to 1,200 m sedimentary rock sequence covers the basement at the south of the Negev, near Eilat. The sedimentary formations consistently become thicker and reach up to 5,000 m in the northern part of the Negev- about 200 km from Eilat. Among the unique geological phenomena of the Negev, one can count the Dead Sea Rift Valley, the three huge erosion- circuses ("Machteshim"), and the transversal creeks, which cross the anticlines from one side to the other. The book describes systematically each of the rock formations, their composition, and the environmental conditions at the time, as well as explains the natural processes that led to the formation of the landscape that we see today.