Giving fresh impetus to Germany’s: collaboration with Africa on migration. Bertelsmann Stiftung Policy Brief Migration 05 2020.

In political terms, Africa is becoming more and more important for Germany. For example, its Federal Gov- ernment has stated that it has “recognized the signi- ficance and potential of our neighboring continent and is striving for a deeper partnership.” German politi- cians have never travelled to African countries as often as they have in recent years. One of the key reasons behind this is the issue of migration, as the so-called “displacement crisis” has heralded a new era in terms of foreign policies on Africa and migration. The issue is also becoming increasingly charged due to demographic developments on the African conti- nent and the shortage of skilled workers in Germany. Against this background, cooperation in a spirit of partnership will play a crucial role in efforts to tackle the current migration policy challenges – i.e., the lack of prospects for young people in Africa and the importance of multilateral cooperation – but also to address them profitably from a market economy perspective

Fashion forecasting and selection process of womenswear retailers: the co-production of fashion by producers and consumers

Looking at the working practices of designers, buyers and merchandisers this thesis attempts to explore the dynamics that govern high street womenswear retailers. By concentrating on the retailing rather than manufacturing of womenswear the thesis takes into account that the balance of power between clothing manufacturers and retailers has shifted - today the creative, i.e. design, capital within the fashion industry is in the hands of the retailers who dominate and direct fashion at the high street level.Broadly following production of culture and symbolic interactionist approaches to the culture industries, the thesis opens with an exploration of collective activity as an important dimension of the production of cultural artefacts. Attention is drawn to production of culture proponents' models of selection processes in culture industries, where cultural artefacts enter a set of gatekeeping or filtering stages that determine their acceptance or rejection. However, while these selection models provide significant insights into some of the dynamics that govern the production of culture, the non-conflictual, unidirectional portrayal of selection processes and the exclusion of consumption-related issues not only leaves important areas of investigation untouched, but distorts the actual working practices of culture industry practitioners. The aim of this thesis, therefore, is to open up the 'black box' of fashion production and provide an alternative model of selection processes through an empirical investigation of how fashion forecasting and garment selection are executed. Based on data from semi-structured interviews with designers, buyers and merchandisers it is suggested that selection processes in high street womenswear retailers can be divided into two distinct levels - forecasting and garment selection. Each level is characterised by (a) the occupational group that dominates it and (b) by a specific interplay between teamwork and conflict. It is proposed that the construction of a shared customer image among key players in the industry acts as an ordering principle which not only helps practitioners overcome differences in occupational outlooks, but which also directs their efforts towards the creation of garments that they feel will gratify their customers' taste. Practitioners' perceived customer image, therefore, plays a significant role in fashion industry forecasting and selection processes, because it influences the fashion production cycle at all levels.In addition, the thesis draws attention to variations in retailers' organisational set-up and shows how they influence the balance of power between key players and the competitive strategies companies adopt to survive in the market. These observations are grounded in a discussion of the transformation of Western economies from Fordism to post-Fordism, while also drawing on arguments regarding the co-existence and differential development of diverse fashion systems within the UK clothing industry since the mid-nineteenth century

Two-dimensional ferromagnetism, strong Rashba effect and valence changes in lanthanide intermetallics: A photoemission study

The search for novel technologies like spin-based electronics and suitable materials for respective devices requires a profound understanding of fundamental interactions regarding electron spin and related properties. In the same context, with ongoing device miniaturisation, surface-related phenomena become increasingly important. Here, we study the electronic and magnetic properties of quasi-2D electron states at a metallic surface under the influence of the Rashba effect and exchange coupling to localised 4f moments that order magnetically at low temperatures. Particularly, in the considered systems, both interactions are of similar strengths, a case which is rather unexplored in the literature. Our model system is the (001) surface of intermetallic LnIr2Si2 compounds with ThCr2Si2 structure, where Ln = lanthanide. With this work, we continue our long-term systematic study of the LnT2Si2 compounds with T = Rh, where the Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling is about a hundred times weaker than the exchange interaction. Using ARPES and DFT we explore with GdIr2Si2 and EuIr2Si2 two representatives of the LnIr2Si2 family, which are both characterised by the insensitivity of the 4f shell to the crystal electric field. On the other hand, they have fundamentally different bulk properties. GdIr2Si2 is a robust bulk antiferromagnet with a high ordering temperature of 87 K, whereas EuIr2Si2 is a mixed-valent material with a non-magnetic ground state in the bulk. The mean Eu valency is strongly temperature dependent, changing continuously from a nearly divalent magnetic configuration at room temperature to a nearly trivalent non-magnetic Eu state below 50K. Studying the surface states in both compounds we find that the magnitude of the Rashba-like spin-orbit interaction increases tremendously in comparison to the isoelectronic Rh compounds. This is reflected in a huge splitting of the surface state bands and emphasizes the importance of atomic spin-orbit coupling in high Z elements for the strength of the Rashba effect. Employing DFT, which reproduces the measured band structure very accurately, we find the same exotic triple winding of the electron spin along the isoenergy contours of the surface state bands as reported in terms of a cubic Rashba effect for the Rh compounds. This proves the generic nature of the surface states and their universal properties in the considered LnT2Si2 compounds. With the ordering of the 4f moments at low temperatures, spin structure and surface band dispersion undergo significant changes induced by the exchange interaction. Pronounced asymmetries emerge in the band dispersion, which allow for the determination of the magnetisation axis. We demonstrate that this is even possible if spectral structures originating from different magnetic domains overlap in the spectra. Remarkably, we find respective asymmetries in EuIr2Si2, too, despite the almost trivalent, and thus non-magnetic Eu state at low temperatures. With complementary experimental techniques like x-ray absorption, x-ray linear and circular dichroism as well as by taking photoelectron diffraction into account, we demonstrate that in the surface Si–Ir–Si–Eu four-layer block Eu is nearly divalent and magnetically active. The associated Eu moments order ferromagnetically below 49K. In the case of Eu termination, we find that the 4f moments of the divalent Eu ions at the surface order ferromagnetically below 10K, too, and unveil thus another occurrence of 2D surface-related magnetism in the same non-magnetic bulk compound. Simultaneously, the mixed-valent properties of EuIr2Si2 and the strong temperature dependence of the mean Eu valency are clearly reflected in the electronic structure of the bulk in a smooth expansion of the Doughnut Fermi surface sheet with increasing temperature, which is interpreted as a band-filling effect. Our results show the high tunability of the electron spin by combining spin-orbit coupling and structural inversion asymmetry with the exchange interaction, which is at the heart of spintronics applications. The disclosure of controllable 2D magnetism at the surface of a non-magnetic bulk compound, which is enabled by an instability in the 4f shell, nominates valence fluctuating 4f compounds, especially with Eu and Sm, to be promising candidates for fundamental studies and applications. Our study moreover demonstrates the richness and versatility of 4f physics that may differ significantly at the surface and in the bulk.:1. Introduction 2. Preliminary Studies 2.1. Short introduction to lanthanides and 4f physics 2.2. LnT2Si2 compounds 3. Foundations 3.1. Band structure 3.2. Bulk states, surface states and surface resonances 3.3. The principles of photoelectron spectroscopy 3.4. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy 3.5. Photoabsorption and resonant photoelectron spectroscopy 3.6. X-ray absorption spectroscopy 3.6.1. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism 3.6.2. X-ray magnetic linear dichroism 3.7. Photoelectron diffraction 3.8. Synchrotron and synchrotron radiation 3.9. Density functional theory 4. Methods 4.1. Experimental details 4.2. DFT calculations 5. GdIr2Si2 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Results and discussion 5.2.1. Paramagnetic phase 5.2.2. Magnetically ordered phase 5.3. Summary 6. EuIr2Si2 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Results and discussion 6.2.1. Photoemission from the Eu 4f shell 6.2.2. ARPES on the Si-terminated surface 6.2.3. X-ray magnetic linear and circular dichroism 6.2.4. Eu termination 6.2.5. Determination of the mean Eu valency in the subsurface layers 6.2.6. Bulk properties 6.3. Summary 7. ConclusionDie Suche nach neuartigen Technologien wie spinbasierte Elektronik sowie nach geeigneten Materialien für entsprechende Bauteile erfordert ein tiefgreifendes Verständnis der Wechselwirkungen des Elektronenspins und damit verbundener Materialeigenschaften. Mit der zunehmenden Miniaturisierung von Bauteilen gewinnen in diesem Zusammenhang auch Oberflächenphänomene zunehmend an Bedeutung. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir die elektronischen und magnetischen Eigenschaften quasizweidimensionaler elektronischer Zustände an metallischen Oberflächen unter dem Einfluss des Rashba-Effekts und der Austauschwechselwirkung mit lokalisierten 4f Momenten, die bei tiefen Temperaturen magnetisch ordnen. Dabei liegt die Besonderheit der untersuchten Systeme darin, dass beide Wechselwirkungen von vergleichbarer Stärke sind. Dieser Fall ist in der Fachliteratur bislang unterrepräsentiert. Unser Modellsystem ist die (001)-Oberfläche intermetallischer LnIr2Si2 Verbindungen mit ThCr2Si2 Struktur, wobei Ln ein Lanthanoidenelement darstellt. Dabei führen wir die langjährige und systematische Untersuchung von LnT2Si2 Verbindungen mit T = Rh fort, in denen die Rashba-artige Spin-Bahn-Kopplung ungefähr 100-mal schwächer als die Austauschwechselwirkung ist. Mit Hilfe von winkelaufgelöster Photoelektronenspektroskopie (ARPES) und Dichtefunktionaltheorie (DFT) erkunden wir mit GdIr2Si2 und EuIr2Si2 zwei Vertreter der LnT2Si2 Familie, die beide durch die Insensibilität der 4f Schale gegenüber dem Kristallfeld ausgezeichnet sind. Zugleich haben sie grundsätzlich verschiedene Volumeneigenschaften. GdIr2Si2 ist ein robuster Volumenantiferromagnet mit einer hohen Ordnungstemperatur von 87K, wohingegen EuIr2Si2 eine gemischtvalente Verbindung mit einem nicht-magnetischen Volumengrundzustand ist. Die mittlere Eu Valenz ist stark temperaturabhängig, sie ändert sich kontinuierlich von einer nahezu zweiwertigen Konfiguration bei Raumtemperatur zu einem beinahe dreiwertigen, nicht-magnetischen Eu Zustand unterhalb von _ 50K. Die Untersuchung der Oberflächenzustände in beiden Verbindungen zeigt, dass die Stärke der Rashba-artigen Spin-Bahn-Kopplung gegenüber den isoelektronischen Rh Verbindungen erheblich zunimmt. Dies spiegelt sich in einer riesigen Aufspaltung der Oberflächenbänder wider und unterstreicht die Bedeutung der atomaren Spin-Bahn-Kopplung in Elementen mit großer Kernzahl Z für die Stärke des Rashba-Effekts. Unsere DFT Rechnungen reproduzieren die gemessene Bandstruktur mit hoher Genauigkeit und offenbaren dieselbe Dreifachwindung des Spins entlang der Konturen konstanter Energie, die schon als kubischer Rashba-Effekt in den Rh Verbindungen beobachtet wurde. Hierin zeigt sich das allgemeingültige Wesen der Oberflächenzustände und deren universelle Eigenschaften in den betrachteten LnT2Si2 Verbindungen. Das Ordnen der 4f Momente bei niedrigen Temperaturen führt zu starken Veränderungen in der Spinstruktur und der Dispersion der Oberflächenbänder durch die einsetzende Austauschwechselwirkung. In der Bandstruktur bilden sich starke Asymmetrien, aus denen die Magnetisierungsachse bestimmt werden kann. Wir zeigen, dass dies sogar dann noch möglich ist, wenn sich spektrale Strukturen überlagern, die von unterschiedlichen magnetischen Domänen stammen. Besonders bemerkenswert ist, dass entsprechende Asymmetrien auch in EuIr2Si2 auftreten, trotz des nahezu dreiwertigen und damit nicht-magnetischen Eu bei tiefen Temperaturen. Mit komplementären experimentellen Methoden wie Röntgenabsorption, linearem und zirkularem Röntgendichroismus als auch durch die Berücksichtigung von Beugungseffekten in der Photoelektronenspektroskopie zeigen wir, dass Eu im Si–Ir–Si–Eu Oberflächenblock beinahe zweiwertig und magnetisch aktiv ist. Die zugehörigen Eu Momente ordnen unterhalb von 49K ferromagnetisch. Im Fall der Eu-Terminierung stellen wir fest, dass auch die 4f Momente der zweiwertigen Eu-Ionen an der Oberfläche unterhalb von 10K ferromagnetisch geordnet sind, und enthüllen damit ein weiteres Vorkommen zweidimensionalen, oberflächenbezogenen Magnetismus in derselben, nichtmagnetischen Volumenverbindung. Gleichzeitig spiegeln sich die gemischtvalenten Eigenschaften von EuIr2Si2 deutlich in der elektronischen Volumenbandstruktur in einer kontinuierlichen Ausdehnung der Doughnut-Fermifläche mit steigender Temperatur wider. Dies interpretieren wir als Bandfüllungseffekt. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen die hohe Einstellbarkeit des Elektronenspins durch die Kombination von Spin-Bahn-Kopplung und struktureller Inversionsasymmetrie mit der Austauschwechselwirkung, was die Grundlage für Anwendungen in der spinbasierten Elektronik bildet. Die Enthüllung von kontrollierbarem, zweidimensionalem Magnetismus an der Oberfläche einer Verbindung mit instabiler 4f Schale, die im Volumen nicht-magnetisch ist, nominiert gemischtvalente 4f Verbindungen, insbesondere mit Eu und Sm, als vielversprechende Kandidaten für Grundlagenforschung und Anwendungen. Unsere Studie zeigt zudem den Reichtum und die Vielseitigkeit von 4f Systemen, deren Eigenschaften sich an der Oberfläche deutlich vom Volumen unterscheiden können.:1. Introduction 2. Preliminary Studies 2.1. Short introduction to lanthanides and 4f physics 2.2. LnT2Si2 compounds 3. Foundations 3.1. Band structure 3.2. Bulk states, surface states and surface resonances 3.3. The principles of photoelectron spectroscopy 3.4. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy 3.5. Photoabsorption and resonant photoelectron spectroscopy 3.6. X-ray absorption spectroscopy 3.6.1. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism 3.6.2. X-ray magnetic linear dichroism 3.7. Photoelectron diffraction 3.8. Synchrotron and synchrotron radiation 3.9. Density functional theory 4. Methods 4.1. Experimental details 4.2. DFT calculations 5. GdIr2Si2 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Results and discussion 5.2.1. Paramagnetic phase 5.2.2. Magnetically ordered phase 5.3. Summary 6. EuIr2Si2 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Results and discussion 6.2.1. Photoemission from the Eu 4f shell 6.2.2. ARPES on the Si-terminated surface 6.2.3. X-ray magnetic linear and circular dichroism 6.2.4. Eu termination 6.2.5. Determination of the mean Eu valency in the subsurface layers 6.2.6. Bulk properties 6.3. Summary 7. Conclusio

A question of order: The role of collective taste as a strategy to cope with demand uncertainty in the womenswear fashion industry

Though strong branding and a distinctive product range are often identified as important factors for companies' economic success (see, e.g., Robinson [1999]) many UK womenswear retailers offer surprisingly similar products. The author argues that product sameness amongst many high street womenswear retailers in the UK is a deliberate strategy employed by industry practitioners to limit demand uncertainty. Based on an empirical study of UK high street womenswear retailers the author argues that the womenswear fashion industry, like other industries operating in markets faced by high levels of demand uncertainty (Crane 1992), has adopted strategies to minimise economic risks. The author explores how fashion information created by companies/groups in the quaternary industry sector is used as inspirational sources for fashion workers at retailing level and contributes to the development of a collective taste amongst them. Collective taste in the context of this research is seen not as a by-product of interaction as theorised by Blumer (1969), but as a strategy to cope with the inherent demand uncertainty experienced by firms operating in the womenswear market and as a means for establishing some orderliness in the fashion system.div_PaSAspers, Patrik. 2006. Contextual Knowledge. Current Sociology 54 (5): 745-763. Accessed July 31, 2014 doi: 10.1177/0011392106066814 Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.- The Sociological Quarterly 10: 275-291. Accessed August 15, 2014 doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1969.tb01292.x. Bourdieu, Pierre avec Delsaut, Yvette. 1975. Le Couturier et sa Griffe: Contribution une Thorie de la Magie.- Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 1 (1): 7-36. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Braham, Peter. 1997. Fashion: Unpacking a Cultural Production.- In Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, edited by Paul du Gay, 121-165. London: Sage. Caves, Richard. 2000. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press. Color Marketing Group. 2014. About Color Marketing Group-. Accessed June 13. http://www.colormarketing.org/about-cmg. Costantino, Maria. 1998. Fashion Marketing and PR. London: BT Batsford. Crane, Diane. 1992. The Production of Culture: Media and the Urban Arts. London: Sage. Davis, Fred. 1991. Herbert Blumer and the Study of Fashion - a Reminiscence and a Critique.- Symbolic Interaction 14 (1): 1-21. Davis, Fred. 1992. Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. De Vany, Arthur. 2004. Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry. London: Routledge. Dempster, Anna M. 2006. Managing Uncertainty in Creative Industries.- Creativity and Innovation Management 15 (3): 224-233. Dempster, Anna M. 2005. Entrepreneurial Reactions to Uncertainty in the Creative Industries.- Paper presented at the Conference on The Creative Industries and Intellectual Property, London, May 22-23. Entwistle, Joanne. 2009. The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion: Markets and Value in Clothing and Modelling. New York: Berg Ewing, Elizabeth. 1993. History of Twentieth Century Fashion. 3rd ed. London: B. T. Batsford. Fine, Ben and Leopold, Ellen. 1993. The World of Consumption. London: Routledge. Finkelstein, Joanne. 1998. Fashion: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press. Gilbert, David 2006 From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion's World Cities.- In Fashion's World Cities, edited by Christopher Breward and David Gilbert, 3 -32. Oxford and New York: Berg. Godley, Andrew. 1998. Competitiveness in the Clothing Industry: The Economics of Fashion in UK Womenswear, 1880-1950.- Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management 2 (2): 125-36. Goldman, William. 1996. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. New York: Warner Books. Gronow, Jukka. 2001. The Sociology of Taste. Taylor & Francis e-Library Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Post-modernity: An Enquiry into the Origin of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Hirsch, Paul M. 1972. Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems.- American Journal of Sociology 77 (4): 639-659. Intercolor. 2014. History of Intercolor.- Accessed June 13. http://www.intercolor.nu/history.html. International Colour Authority. 2012. The History of ICA.- Accessed June 8. http://www.colourforecasting.com/thehistoryofica. Ryan, John and Peterson, Richard A. 1982. The Product Image: The Fate of Creativity in Country Music Songwriting.- Sage Annual Reviews of Communication Research. 10: 11-32. King, Julie. 2011.-Colour Forecasting: An Investigation into how its Development and Use Impacts on Accuracy.: PhD diss., University of the Arts London. Lash, Scott and Urry, John. 1994. Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 1994. The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton, New Jersey: The Princeton University Press. May, Tim. 2011. Social Research: Issues, Methods and Process. 4th ed. Maidenhead, England: McGraw Hill. McClatchey, Caroline. 2011. Fashion Week: From the Catwalk to the Street.- BBC New Magazine, September 22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14984468 Meyer, Heinz-Dieter. 2000. Taste Formation in Pluralistic Societies: The Role of Rhetorics and Institutions. International Sociology 15 (1): 33-56. Accessed July, 28 doi: 10.1177/0268580900015001003. Premire Vision. 2009. The Show.- Accessed September 5. http://www.premiervision.fr. Robinson, P. 1999. Marketing Fashion: Strategies and Trends for Fashion Brands. London: Informa Retail & Consumer. Rocamora, Agnes. 2002. Fields of Fashion: Critical Insights into Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture. Journal of Consumer Culture 2 (3): 341-362. Accessed July, 28 doi: 10.1177/146954050200200303. Rousso, Chelsea. 2012. Fashion Forward: A Guide to Fashion Forecasting. Fairchild Publications. Rueling, Charles-Clemens. 2000. Theories of (Management?) Fashion: The contributions of Veblen, Simmel, Blumer, and Bourdieu.- Accessed July, 29 http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:5868. Sagot-Duvauroux, Dominique. 2011 Art Markets- In A Handbook of Cultural Economics, 2nd ed. Edited by Ruth Towse 33-42. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Schulz, Susanne. 2008. Our Lady Hates Viscose: The Role of the Customer Image in High Street Fashion Production.- Cultural Sociology 2 (3): 385-405. Sharpe, Michael. 2013. Copying is so clich.- The Glasgow Guardian, October 30. http://glasgowguardian.co.uk/2013/12/19/copying-is-so-cliche/. Shields, Rachel. 2007. From the Catwalk to the High Street.- The Independent, October 28. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/from-the-catwalk-to-the-high-street-398152.html. Simmel, Georg. 1904 Fashion International Quarterly 10: 130-155. Stylesight. 2014. Runway Analysis-. Accessed February 2. http://www.stylesight.com/en/content/runway-analysis. Thompson, John B. 2010. Merchants of Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. UK Fashion and Textile Association. 2014. About: Who we are-. Accessed June 13. http://www.ukft.org/aboutus.php?page=about&psub=whoweare&cat=1. Veblen, Thorstein. 1994. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Dover Publications, Inc. Wilson, Elizabeth and Taylor, Lou. 1989. Through the Looking Glass: A History of Dress from 1860 to the Present Day. London: BBC Books.8pub3865pub

Unraveling Subunit Cooperativity in Homotetrameric HCN2 Channels

AbstractIn a multimeric receptor protein, the binding of a ligand can modulate the binding of a succeeding ligand. This phenomenon, called cooperativity, is caused by the interaction of the receptor subunits. By using a complex Markovian model and a set of parameters determined previously, we analyzed how the successive binding of four ligands leads to a complex cooperative interaction of the subunits in homotetrameric HCN2 pacemaker channels. The individual steps in the model were characterized by Gibbs free energies for the equilibria and activation energies, specifying the affinity of the binding sites and the transition rates, respectively. Moreover, cooperative free energies were calculated for each binding step in both the closed and the open channel. We show that the cooperativity sequence positive-negative-positive determined for the binding affinity is generated by the combined effect of very different cooperativity sequences determined for the binding and unbinding rates, which are negative-negative-positive and no-negative-no, respectively. It is concluded that in the ligand-induced activation of HCN2 channels, the sequence of cooperativity based on the binding affinity is caused by two even qualitatively different sequences of cooperativity that are based on the rates of ligand binding and unbinding

Copying to be unique? An analysis of high street retailers' product differentiation strategies

Based on empirical data from 20 semi-structured interviews with designers, buyers and merchandisers of UK-based multiple womenswear retailers, this chapter examines the variations in retailers’ working practices with a particular emphasis on their product differentiation strategies. The theme running throughout this chapter is that of differentiation and similarity – a topic of enquiry commonly associated with Simmel’s essay on fashion.1 This discussion of the womenswear retailing industry demonstrates that, more than one hundred years after Simmel published his work, the dualistic tendencies of similarity and differentiation continue to fuel the modern fashion system.https://brill.com/view/title/39140pubpu

High energy astroparticle physics for high school students

The questions about the origin and type of cosmic particles are not only fascinating for scientists in astrophysics, but also for young enthusiastic high school students. To familiarize them with research in astroparticle physics, the Pierre Auger Collaboration agreed to make 1% of its data publicly available. The Pierre Auger Observatory investigates cosmic rays at the highest energies and consists of more than 1600 water Cherenkov detectors, located near Malarg\"{u}e, Argentina. With publicly available data from the experiment, students can perform their own hands-on analysis. In the framework of a so-called Astroparticle Masterclass organized alongside the context of the German outreach network Netzwerk Teilchenwelt, students get a valuable insight into cosmic ray physics and scientific research concepts. We present the project and experiences with students.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands, PoS(ICRC2015)30

Strengthening organic food value chains in Germany - first results of the EU-project HalthyGrowth – From niche to volume with integrity and trust

Our presentation starts with a short overview of the diversity of organic food chains in Germany. We show that several different supply chains coexist. Smaller businesses tend to focus on market niches and particular consumer groups and values. The in-depth analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of different types of organic food chains. Exemplarily, we highlight factors that can strengthen value chains for organic food

Strategies for medium-sized value-based food chains during growing process with a particular focus on the business logic and management concept

Growth of values-based food chains holds particular challenges. The disconnection between producers and consumers require strategies that maintain and communicate values throughout the food chain. The objective of this paper is to analyze strategies organic food businesses have chosen to deal with growth, and in particular, strategies that focus on consumers’ expectations and producers’ business strategies. A literature review on the challenges of growing organic food chains provided the conceptual framework. The analysis of three case studies of organic food businesses shows that the values of food chains and the related business strategies aiming to maintain and transmit these values differ significantly. One case study business is closely linked to the farmers and the chain is characterized by the quality of products and process. The second case study focuses on reliability between chain partners, while the third is based on good cooperation aiming to secure income and employment