The European Market for Organic Products: Growth and Development

The European Market for organic food has been growing rapidly in terms of both supply and demand during the 1990s. However, national markets develop in many different directions. In some countries the market share ist quiet high while in others a market for organic farming products nearly does not exist. This book detects and compares the national markets of the main organic products in 18 European countries - the 15 EU countries plus Switzerland, Norway and the Czech Republic - on the basis of the most comprehensive collection of data ever presented covering the period 1993 - 1997/1998. It is shown that European demand is far from being satisfied and the major efforts in organising a transparent international market and developing marketing strategies is necessary to realise this potential. This book is aimed at policy makers, the private sector, researchers and students in the field of economics and politics of organic farming

Maieutic Irony: Socratic Method and Pedagogical Communication

Irony is an interesting yet understudied rhetorical scheme. In the current study, several notable uses of irony in the Socratic dialogues are investigated to explore 1. What is said, 2. What is interpreted by the interlocutor internal to dialogue, 3. The effect of employing irony on the interlocutor within the dialogue, and 4. What is interpreted by the reader as a literary piece. The results are presented with the attempt of understanding Socrates’ intentional use of irony as a teaching and argumentative method, and to examine how the techniques and intended effects can be reproducible in a teaching context. From the exploratory dialogue method of Socrates, to the blunder invoking technique of Columbo, criticizing, and provoking confusion, maieutic irony has much to contribute to pedagogical practice

Design and evaluation of fluidized bed heat recovery for diesel engine systems

The potential of utilizing fluidized bed heat exchangers in place of conventional counter-flow heat exchangers for heat recovery from adiabatic diesel engine exhaust gas streams was studied. Fluidized bed heat recovery systems were evaluated in three different heavy duty transport applications: (1) heavy duty diesel truck; (2) diesel locomotives; and (3) diesel marine pushboat. The three applications are characterized by differences in overall power output and annual utilization. For each application, the exhaust gas source is a turbocharged-adiabatic diesel core. Representative subposed exhaust gas heat utilization power cycles were selected for conceptual design efforts including design layouts and performance estimates for the fluidized bed heat recovery heat exchangers. The selected power cycles were: organic rankine with RC-1 working fluid, turbocompound power turbine with steam injection, and stirling engine. Fuel economy improvement predictions are used in conjunction with capital cost estimates and fuel price data to determine payback times for the various cases

A Meme is Worth a Thousand Words: Universal Communication Through Memes

With the rise of the digital age has come about a new form of communicating concepts—the meme: repeatable, transferable information. The purpose of this project is to understand the inclusive nature of internet communication not restricted by barriers. This format plays with the boundaries to imagination, creating a new form of communication not relying on language, color, or shape, but the interchange of these within an established concept. Memes have created a universal, living form of expression irrelevant of culture, region, age, or language in which individuals cross normal borders of expression and communication. We attempt to define the modern meme through its philosophical etymology and its evolved application. We then examine how memes, based on this definition, can be used as a legitimate form of communication. With this project we propose that the meme has potential to have real world, expressive effects to cross barriers to communication

Dissolved nitrogen in the sea water of the Northeast Pacific with notes on the total carbon dioxide and the dissolved oxygen

This paper deals with a study and discussion of the distribution of dissolved nitrogen in sea water and its relation to the dissolved oxygen and the total carbon dioxide. Previous studies have been made by Buch (1), Knudsen (8, 9), Petterson (11), Jacobsen (7), Hamburg (6), Dittmar (3) and recently by Rakestraw and Emmel (13., 14). Fox (4) published data showing the variation in the concentration of dissolved nitrogen in equilibrium with the nitrogen of the atmosphere at standard pressure for different temperatures and for different concentrations of sea water. Using these data it is possible to calculate the percent of saturation of the dissolved nitrogen in sea water at a given temperature and chlorinity, the pressure of the gaseous nitrogen being equivalent to that of the gas in air at standard pressur

Overcoming losses with gain in a negative refractive index metamaterial

On the basis of a full-vectorial three-dimensional Maxwell-Bloch approach we investigate the possibility of using gain to overcome losses in a negative refractive index fishnet metamaterial. We show that appropriate placing of optically pumped laser dyes (gain) into the metamaterial structure results in a frequency band where the nonbianisotropic metamaterial becomes amplifying. In that region both the real and the imaginary part of the effective refractive index become simultaneously negative and the figure of merit diverges at two distinct frequency points.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Evidence for the Presence of Thin and Heterogenous Dust Deposits on Ryugu's Boulders From Hayabusa2 MARA and Sample Data

Middle infrared spectral results obtained in-situ by the Hayabusa2 MARA instrument are generally in-line with previous results and a new comparison with sample C0137 returned from asteroid (162173) Ryugu, being similar to an aqueously altered CI1 chondrite. The mid-IR spectrum of the boulder on Ryugu measured by MARA is shallower around 9 μm compared to the laboratory spectrum of C0137. Here we show that discontinuous, fine dust deposits can partially explain the differences in the spectral data and remain in agreement with the temperature observations of the boulder by MARA if an opaque dust layer covers less than 3% of the field of view. Such a presence of dust covering a low porosity boulder was discounted by previous analysis of the mid-infrared MARA data which did not consider a highly porous boulder as we do here

Buckling mediated by mobile localized elastic excitations

Experiments reveal that structural transitions in thin sheets are mediated by the passage of transient and stable mobile localized elastic excitations. These ``crumples'' or ``d-cones'' nucleate, propagate, interact, annihilate, and escape. Much of the dynamics occurs on millisecond time scales. Nucleation sites correspond to regions where generators of the ideal unstretched surface converge. Additional stable intermediate states illustrate two forms of quasistatic inter-crumple interaction through ridges or valleys. These interactions create pairs from which extended patterns may be constructed in larger specimens. The onset of localized transient deformation with increasing sheet size is correlated with a characteristic stable crumple size, whose measured scaling with thickness is consistent with prior theory and experiment for localized elastic features in thin sheets. We offer a new theoretical justification of this scaling.Comment: contains link to video