The Role of Trust in European Food Chains: Theory and Empirical Findings

In Europe, consumer trust in food has become one of the most important factors for the stability of the food sector. An essential prerequisite for the ability to communicate the trustworthiness of food to consumers (B2C) is the creation, maintenance, and communication of trust between companies across the entire food value chain (B2B). For the management and preservation of trust in food chains it is important to know whether differences occur across European countries or whether distinct product chains show variations regarding trust. Based on a survey in five European countries with 747 respondents, this paper assesses the current level of trust between companies together with its influencing structural factors in European food chains and determines criteria allowing the active management of the level of trust in business relations in food chains by estimating a structural equation model.trust, levels of trust, determinants to trust, food chain management, trust management, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Superradiant Laser: First-Order Phase Transition and Non-stationary Regime

We solve the superradiant laser model in two limiting cases. First the stationary low-pumping regime is considered where a first-order phase transition in the semiclassical solution occurs. This discontinuity is smeared out in the quantum regime. Second, we solve the model in the non-stationary regime where we find a temporally periodic solution. For a certain parameter range well separated pulses may occur.Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, 4 figure

Surface oscillation in peatlands: How variable and important is it?

Hydrology, particularly the water table position below the surface, is an important control on biogeochemical and ecological processes in peatlands. The position of the water table is a function of total storage changes, drainable porosity and peatland surface oscillation (PSO). Because the absolute level of the peat surface (ASL) oscillates in a peatland, we can assign two different water table positions: the water table depth below the surface (relative water level, RWL) and the water table position above an absolute elevation datum eg. sea level (absolute water level, AWL). A review of 37 studies that report peatland surface oscillation indicate a wide range (0.4-55 cm), which is to the same order as (or one order smaller than) water storage changes and RWL fluctuations. PSO can vary substantially across a single peatland and through time. A set of mechanisms (flotation, compression/shrinkage, gas volume changes and freezing) is hypothesised to cause ASL changes. The potential of PSO to reduce RWL fluctuations trended (mean in %) floating peatlands (63) > bogs (21), fens (18) > disturbed peatlands (10) with respect to peatland types. To investigate the spatiotemporal variability of peatland surface oscillation, AWL and ASL were monitored continuously over a one-year period (one site) and monthly (23 sites) in a warm-temperate peatland that is dominated by Empodisma minus (Restionaceae). A new measurement method was developed by pairing two water level transducers, one attached to a stable benchmark (ÆAWL) and one attached to the peat surface (ÆRWL). From August 2005 until August 2006 the ASL oscillated at one site through a range of 22 cm following AWL fluctuations (in total 47 cm). Consequently, RWL fluctuations were reduced on average to 53% of AWL fluctuations. The strong AWL-ASL relationship was linear for 15 sites with manual measurements. However, eight sites showed significantly higher rates of peatland surface oscillation during the wet season (ie. high AWLs) and thus a non-linear behaviour. Temporary flotation of upper peat layers during the wet season may have caused this non-linear behaviour. On the peatland scale AWL fluctuations (mean 40 cm among sites) were reduced by 30–50% by PSO except for three sites with shallow and dense peat at the peatland margin (7–11%). The reduction of RWL fluctuation was high compared to literature values. The spatial variability of PSO seemed to match well with vegetation patterns rather than peat thickness or bulk density. Sites with large PSO showed high cover of Empodisma minus. Surface level changes exhibited surprisingly hysteretic behaviour subsequent to raised AWLs, when the rise of ASL was delayed. This delay reversed the positive ASL-AWL relationship because the surface slowly rose even though AWL started receding. Hysteresis was more pronounced during the dry season than during the wet season. The observed hysteresis can be sufficiently simulated by a simplistic model incorporating delayed ASL fluctuations. PSO has wide implications for peatland hydrology by reducing RWL fluctuations, which feed back to peat decomposition and plant cover and potentially to (drainable) porosity. Stable RWL also reduce the probability of surface run-off. It is further argued that the gas content of the roots of plants, particularly Empodisma minus, added enough buoyancy to detach the uppermost peat layers resulting in flotation

Judicial Style in Californias Federal Admiralty Court: Ogden Hoffman and the First Ten Years, 1851-1891\u27

The admiralty jurisdiction of Californias federal district court in San Francisco between 1851 and 1861 provides insight into how one federal judge understood and executed his role in a frontier setting. How the Northern District of California\u27s first judge, Harvard-educated Ogden Hoffman, conducted his court, exercised his jurisdiction, arrived at his conclusions, and fashioned his opinions--what might be considered his judicial style--reveals much about legal practice and judicial process in the far west as the middle of the nineteenth century. An examination of the first decade of federal admiralty cases in California suggests that law on the frontier entailed learning, complexity and legal sophistication as well as self-consciousness among legal practitioners. Initially most striking in Hoffman\u27s early admiralty cases are the sources he relied on in reaching his decisions. Despite the international basis of the law of the sea, one might have expected a mid-nineteenth century admiralty court in California to place substantial reliance upon American or English sources and less upon European Continental sources. Hoffman\u27s opinions attain a striking degree of sophistication in his citation and discussion of Continental--especially French--statutes, cases, and treatises. The sheer diversity of sources--American, English, and Continental, not to mention the large collection of reports of federal decisions--provides abundant evidence that adjudication in Hoffman\u27s court did not occur in primitive isolation. Moreover, the manner in which such materials were used suggests that not only Hoffman, but many of those who practiced in his court had been well trained as common law lawyers and were far from parochial in their legal outlook. Hoffman\u27s legal education, awareness, and obedience to the dictates of the Supreme Court and Congress, and his idolization of Joseph Story made it unlikely that his court would ride rough-shod over established legal traditions. Instead, Hoffman slowly readjusted his inherited legal values in the face of the peculiar setting of San Francisco and a growing appreciation that the weight of federal judicial authority rested primarily on his shoulders

The Judicial Business of a Nineteenth-Century Federal Trial Court: The Northern District of California, 1851-1891

Studies of the work of American trial courts--particularly the federal courts in the nineteenth century--are extremely rare. One exception is Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891 (1991)--an archival study of the forty year tenure of the first judge of the Northern District of California. Federal Justice is both an institutional study of that court and a biography of its first judge, Ogden Hoffman. Federal Justice rests upon an analysis of over 19,000 case files generated by the first forty years of that courts existence and provides a general summary of the dockets and workload of the court. The present study presents a more detailed and statistical analysis of the number, type, and disposition of cases than was available in Federal Justice. It analyzes the court\u27s eight dockets: Private Admiralty (Chinese habeas corpus petitions), Criminal, Private Admiralty (non-Chinese habeas petitions), Bankruptcy, U.S. Admiralty, Bond Cases, Common Law and Equity, and Private Land Grants. In offering a breakdown of the totality of the workload of the court, it gives a unique and dynamic picture of the workings of a federal trial court of the nineteenth century: the discretionary nature of federal trial court prosecutions; the independence of federal prosecutors; and the varied experiences of federal litigants. The analysis is supplemented by 17 tables and graphs, most of which were not included in Federal Justice

Fallacies of American Constitutionalism

Fallacies of American Constitutionalism\u27 examines the pervasive assumptions in the scholarship of historians, lawyers, and political scientists that impute the central role of the federal Constitution to how Americans understood written constitutions after their Revolution. American struggles to come to grips with the meaning of the sovereignty of the people before and after 1787 reveals very different views about the people as the sovereign from those reflected in the federal Constitution and dispel the notion that our prevailing constitutional view is an unbroken chain stretching back to 1787

More Than \u27Shreds and Patches\u27: California\u27s First Bill of Rights\u27

This article examines the formation of the Bill of Rights--or Declaration of Rights as it was entitled--in Californias 1849 constitution. It analyzes the sources drawn upon to fashion that Bill of Rights and how the drafters of California\u27s first constitution understood the process and purpose of incorporating fundamental principles into a nineteenth century constitution. While those drafters borrowed from existing models and constitutional provisions, considerably more than simple copying was going on. With some notable exceptions, the delegates to that convention did not craft original subjects of protection. They did, however, display an acute awareness of the significance of the process they were engaged in and the significance of the provisions they adopted--original or not. Whatever our attachment to the familiar phrasing of the Federal Bill of Rights, the fact remains that many, if not most, state constitutions clearly intended to provide broader individual rights than did the federal model. Looking only at the language used in California\u27s Bill of Rights to describe similar federal principles as well as the articulation of rights and protections not found in the Federal constitution, it becomes evident that broader protections are accorded under California\u27s 1849 constitution than under the Federal constitution. Indeed, California\u27s 1849 Bill of Rights suggests that its authors not only wished to safeguard individual liberties by crafting language to prohibit and restrict what the state government could do, but also sought to affirm inalienable rights that the people possessed and that the government should inculcate and support. Thus, California\u27s constitutional Framers may have sown the seeds for two enormous developments beyond the scope of the Federal constitution: requiring the state to promote individual liberties and giving constitutional protection to purely private infringements of those individual liberties. Moreover, the goals and objectives of those coming to California were much broader and more ambitious than simply a legal system that would provide predictability and efficiency