Curriculum innovation is challenging and, as several commentators have reported, moves to introduce communicative language teaching in many contexts internationally have resulted in mixed outcomes, or even failure. In an effort to shed some light on this complex problem, this article focuses on curriculum change through the introduction of new communicative textbooks in an engineering college …

The ascomycete fungus Ophiostomanovo-ulmiis responsible for the pandemic of Dutch elm disease that has been ravaging Europe and North America for 50 years. We proceeded to annotate the genome of the O. novo-ulmi strain H327 that was sequenced in 2012. The 31.784-Mb nuclear genome (50.1%GC) is organized into 8 chromosomes containing a total of 8,640 protein-coding genes that we validated with RN…

This article investigates the experience of seven refugee students with academic reading during their first year of college, with a focus on the challenges they faced completing assigned readings and the strategies they used to cope with these challenges. Although the participants graduated from American high schools, they were not considered ‘college-ready’, according to their scores in …

The expansion of English teaching in state education systems places increasing demands on English language teachers and how they are trained. A major thrust of these efforts has focused on improving teachers’ English language proficiency. This expectation is manifested in policy and pedagogical directives that teachers ‘teach English in English’. We argue for a reconceptualization of te…

Shocks to world commodity prices and the depreciation of sterling led to a large increase in the price of food in the UK. It also resulted in large changes in the relative prices of different foods. We document these changes, and consider how they affected the composition of households� shopping baskets. We isolate the impact of changes in relative food prices from variation in preferences…

Within this issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, which focuses on the growing divergence between the �agriculture sector� and the �food sector�, this paper focuses on how this changing divergence affects the political economy of agricultural and food policies

In this paper we present an empirical study of a supermarket supply chain to understand the determinants of prices and profits enjoyed by farmers, processors, and supermarkets. We study the liquid milk market which has seen much controversy about both the distribution of rents and the mechanisms firms have used to influence the distribution. We discuss insights from a series of interviews we co…

The food security debate has focused largely on the farm sector and on trade. Relatively neglected or �hidden� from mainstream debate are the middle segments (processing, logistics, wholesale) of agrifood value chains in developing countries�and yet this �midstream� forms 30�40 per cent of the value added and costs in food value chains. The productivity of the mids…

The provision of food has been a central preoccupation of policy-makers throughout history. Today we are witnessing a period of food security pessimism triggered by increases in food prices, and their higher volatility, that began in 2008. However, previous episodes of food pessimism were ended by the Industrial and Green Revolutions, and policy-makers legitimately ask whether human ingenuity a…

This paper describes the ways in which changing consumption patterns and production technologies have altered the boundaries between agriculture and food. Increasing income and urbanization have driven a steady increase in the demand for prepared and processed foods, reducing the need for in-home preparation. But this well-documented transition has in turn led to a shift in the structure of the…