Strategies to valorise agrobiodiversity

The current food value chain is characterised by a highly standardised offer produced in an increasingly monotonous agricultural system. In parallel, there is a growing interest among consumers for traditional or regional crop varieties. The conservation of these crops is often done by civil society organisations like Arche Noah, Pro Specie Rara, Rete Semi Rurali, Réseau Semence Paysanne or Red Andaluza de Semillas. Some networks sell their food products in local niche markets, specialised stores and supermarkets. To increase their visibility, some producer groups in the networks are interested in developing or improving a label to valorise agrobiodiversity to the consumer. Based on a representative consumer survey in four European countries, we show that consumer awareness with respect to traditional, old varieties is low but the interest in "Diversifood", defined as more diverse, locally adapted, healthy and tasty produce, is substantial. Therefore, we state, that the availability of a label to valorise agrobiodiversity would respond to consumer needs and increase the visibility of the work done by the networks – but only if it is embedded in an appropriate communication strategy aimed at raising consumer awareness about agrobiodiversity

Vortices and charge order in high-T_c superconductors

We theoretically investigate the vortex state of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors in the presence of magnetic fields. Assuming the recently derived nonlinear $\sigma$-model for fluctuations in the pseudogap phase, we find that the vortex cores consist of two crossed regions of elliptic shape, in which a static charge order emerges. Charge density wave order manifests itself as satellites to the ordinary Bragg peaks directed along the axes of the reciprocal copper lattice. Quadrupole density wave (bond order) satellites, if seen, are predicted to be along the diagonals. The intensity of the satellites should grow linearly with the magnetic field, in agreement with the result of recent experiments

Editorial: Woody plants and forest ecosystems in a complex world—Ecological interactions and physiological functioning above and below ground

International audienc

Coronary interventions in Europe 1992

The general practice of coronary interventions is influenced by various aspects, traditional, cultural, socioeconomic and personal. The aim of this survey was to collect the data on coronary interventions in all member countries of the European Society of Cardiology. The data from 12 of the 35 national members were missing or grossly incomplete and were therefore excluded from the analysis. Coronary angiography The total number of coronary angiograms was reported as 683 888, an incidence of 1009 ± 1021 per million inhabitants (range 9 (Romania) to 3076 (Germany)). Germany (246115 cases), France (144 754), the United Kingdom (76 296), Italy (45 517) and Spain (43 495) registered 81% of all the coronary angiograms performed. Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) The total number of reported PTCAs was 147 729, which on average accounted for 19 ± 11% (range 2 (Lithuania) to 53% (Netherlands)) of the coronary angiograms. Most of the PTCAs (82%) were confined to a single vessel. The highest incidence of multivessel PTCA was reported from Slovakia (28%). PTCA took place immediately after the diagnostic study in only 18% of cases. Adjusted per capita, Germany ranked first with 703 PTCAs per million inhabitants, followed by Iceland (619), France (614), Belgium (568) and Austria (485). A major in-hospital complication was reported in 2.5% of the patients undergoing PTCA: 0.4% hospital deaths, 1.0% emergency CABGs and 1.1% myocardial infarctions. New devices Stents were implanted in 3211 patients (2.7% of all PTCA patients), equally distributed between emergency situations (53%) and elective procedures. Other interventional devices were applied in 4133 cases (2.8% of all PTCA cases): directional atherectomy, rotablator, transluminal extraction catheter, laser and Rotacs accounted for 1452, 1232, 55, 558 and 222, respectively. Coronary ultrasound (1350 cases) and coronary angioscopy (373 cases) were rarely performed. Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) A total of 63 477 patients underwent CABG in the reporting centres resulting in a PTCA/CABG ratio of 2.3. A significant under-reporting of surgery in the participating centres must be assumed. Conclusions Although partial reporting might bias conclusions, several findings of this survey are noteworthy: (1) PTCA was a well accepted treatment for coronary artery disease, (2) PTCA was applied more frequently than CABG, (3) there was an extremely wide range of coronary angiography and PTCA performed per million inhabitants, (4) the most common additional procedure was stent implantation, but other new devices were only rarely applie

Consumers and Food

The majority of consumers in Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland buy food in supermarkets. They like the concept of farmers’ varieties and are willing to pay a price premium for foods from farmers’ varieties

Evaluation matrix for products from underutilized crops

We developed a matrix to evaluate valorisation strategies for products from underutilized crops. It shall help networks involved in agrobiodiversity conservation and breeding to find and improve their valorisation strategies, such as a label

Elementary solution to the time-independent quantum navigation problem

A quantum navigation problem concerns the identification of a time-optimal Hamiltonian that realizes a required quantum process or task, under the influence of a prevailing ‘background’ Hamiltonian that cannot be manipulated. When the task is to transform one quantum state into another, finding the solution in closed form to the problem is nontrivial even in the case of timeindependent Hamiltonians. An elementary solution, based on trigonometric analysis, is found here when the Hilbert space dimension is two. Difficulties arising from generalizations to higher-dimensional systems are discussed