Prospects for a European Animal Welfare Label from the German Perspective: Supply Chain Barriers

The Federal Government of Germany as well as the European Commission are discussing the establishment of an animal welfare label. This label should enable consumers to make a conscious purchasing decision on animal welfare products. Various studies show that many consumers (in Germany around 20 %) prefer products produced under animal friendly conditions. However, the supply of such products is limited. The following study examines the source of this discrepancy by way of an action‐based analytical approach and identifies different barriers within the supply chain that prevent the establishment of a market segment for animal welfare products. Although consumer demand will be decisive for long‐term success, first of all the stakeholders of the supply chain must be convinced. If the stakeholders are not prepared to participate in an animal welfare program the diffusion phase can take a very long time or even fail. This study presents such supply chain barriers and interprets them in the light of neoinstitutionalism.animal welfare, label, supply chain, neo‐institutionalism., Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Industrial Organization, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty,

Polytopes Associated to Graph Laplacians

Graphs provide interesting ways to generate families of lattice polytopes. In particular, one can use matrices encoding the information of a finite graph to define vertices of a polytope. This dissertation initiates the study of the Laplacian simplex, PG, obtained from a finite graph G by taking the convex hull of the columns of the Laplacian matrix for G. The Laplacian simplex is extended through the use of a parallel construction with a finite digraph D to obtain the Laplacian polytope, PD. Basic properties of both families of simplices, PG and PD, are established using techniques from Ehrhart theory. Motivated by a well-known conjecture in the field, our investigation focuses on reflexivity, the integer decomposition property, and unimodality of Ehrhart h*-vectors of these polytopes. A systematic investigation of PG for trees, cycles, and complete graphs is provided, which is enhanced by an investigation of PD for cyclic digraphs. We form intriguing connections with other families of simplices and produce G and D such that the h*-vectors of PG and PD exhibit extremal behavior

Nim on Groups

The traditional game of Nim comprises of two players who take turns removing objects from distinct piles. The player who takes the last object is the winner. We consider the game Nim on Cayley graphs of finite groups, where the piles are located on the vertices and the number of objects in each pile is denoted as the weight of the vertex. In this version of the game, a player wins by trapping the opponent on a vertex with weight zero so he or she is unable to further reduce the weight of that vertex. We examine winning strategies for Nim on Cayley graphs of cyclic groups, dihedral groups, and the Quaternions, among others

La zoothérapie au service de la personne âgée: quand la zoothérapie intervient pour soulager le sentiment de solitude des personnes âgées institutionnalisées

Les problématiques rencontrées par les personnes âgées institutionnalisées ont de tout temps préoccupé les soignants. Le sentiment de solitude en fait partie, ayant des répercussions à la fois sur le résident et l’équipe de soins. En parallèle, une thérapie basée sur le lien entre l’humain et l’animal a gagné en popularité dans le domaine de la santé. Utilisée dans un milieu institutionnel auprès de personnes âgées, cette thérapie serait à même d’apporter de nombreux bénéfices vis-à-vis de leur santé physique ou psychique. Il semblerait qu’elle puisse également être utilisée pour lutter contre le sentiment de solitude