European Food Law Update

This EU Food Law Update will focus on the developments that occurred since October 2010 in the areas of genetically modified organisms, novel foods, contaminants, food quality, and labeling

European Union Food Law Update

The following European Union Food Law Update will address significant changes in European Union (EU) food law that occurred between 2006 and early 2008. The update will be different from the previous ones, as it will instead be organized by the subject areas addressed by the developments. The published regulations, proposals, cases, and other relevant news will thus be incorporated under their corresponding topic headings

Perturbations in the E-cadherin/catenin junctional complex in mouse embryos resulting in exencephaly

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A Dispersive Treatment of Kℓ4K_{\ell4} Decays

$K_{\ell4}$ are for several reasons an especially interesting decay channel of $K$ mesons: $K_{\ell4}$ decays allow an accurate measurement of a combination of $S$-wave $\pi\pi$ scattering lengths, one form factor of the decay is connected to the chiral anomaly and the decay is the best source for the determination of some low energy constants of ChPT. We present a dispersive approach to $K_{\ell4}$ decays, which takes rescattering effects fully into account. Some fits to NA48/2 and E865 measurements and results of the matching to ChPT are shown.Comment: 4 pages, talk given by PS at MESON2012 - 12th International Workshop on Meson Production, Properties and Interaction, Krak\'ow, Poland, 31 May - 5 June 201

Low-temperature photoluminescence properties of Nd-doped silicon oxide thin films containing silicon nanocrystals

International audienceThe luminescence properties of neodymium-doped silicon oxide thin films containing silicon nanocrystals (Si-nc) were studied as a function of temperature from 10 to 300 K by steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectrometry. The Nd-related emission at 920 nm, induced by the 4F3/2→4I9/2 shell transitions, was obtained either with a resonant excitation at 585 nm or with an indirect excitation at 325 nm via Si-nc, which act as sensitizers. A saturation of the neodymium-related photoluminescence intensity has been evidenced for indirect excitation thanks to silicon nanocrystals at temperatures below 100 K. According to the Förster model of energy transfer, this saturation is explained by a decrease of the coupling efficiency between Si-nc and rare earth ions at low temperatures, induced by the increase of the silicon nanocrystals lifetime at low temperatures

Centrality in Politics: How Networks Confer Power

A traditional view of power in politics is that it comes from the possession of important resources. The relative possession of resources is thought to provide actors such as people, organizations, and states with means of coercion or influence over others. This traditional view is highly limiting, since power also comes from ties (patterns of association) that link together actors in networks. These ties, whether material (like trade flows) or social (like friendship), determine an actor’s ability to have access to, make connections between, or quickly spread resources to, other actors. An actor’s relative position in a network formed by these ties thus provides another important source of influence over others. In this article, we introduce three classes of network centrality positions (degree, betweenness, and closeness), explain the advantages of each, and demonstrate that network notions of power that derive from centrality can significantly inform the study of politics

Corporate Divestitures and Family Control

This paper investigates the relationship between divestitures and firm value in family firms. Using hand-collected data on a sample of over 30,000 firm-year observations, we find that family firms are less likely than non-family firms to undertake divestitures, especially when these companies are managed by family rather than non-family-CEOs. However, we then establish that the divestitures undertaken by family firms, predominantly those run by family-CEOs, are associated with higher post-divestiture performance than their non-family counterparts. These findings indicate that family firms may fail to fully exploit available economic opportunities, potentially because they pursue multiple objectives beyond the maximization of shareholder value. These results also elucidate how the characteristics of corporate owners and managers can influence the value that firms derive from their corporate strategies

Clogging by sieving in microchannels: Application to the detection of contaminants in colloidal suspensions

We report on a microfluidic method that allows measurement of a small concentration of large contaminants in suspensions of solid micrometer-scale particles. To perform the measurement, we flow the colloidal suspension through a series of constrictions, i.e. a microchannel of varying cross-section. We show and quantify the role of large contaminants in the formation of clogs at a constriction and the growth of the resulting filter cake. By measuring the time interval between two clogging events in an array of parallel microchannels, we are able to estimate the concentration of contaminants whose size is selected by the geometry of the microfluidic device. This technique for characterizing colloidal suspensions offers a versatile and rapid tool to explore the role of contaminants on the properties of the suspensions