Towards a new strategy for organic milk marketing in Hungary

In Hungary, organic food market has both demand and supply oriented aspects: several times not necessary products are distributed, while the selection and volume of certain products are not satisfactory. Thus, our aim was to develop a coordinated benchmark strategy to increase the trade of organic products. To get more details on the Hungarian organic milk market, we conducted professional deep interviews and simultaneously applied the “mystery shopping” method. Nowadays, the market of organic milk and dairy products is slowly increasing in Hungary, however, there is no available statistical data. In the selection there are mostly Hungarian originated products, but some yoghurt, milk, and butter assortments are imported. Partial responsibility belongs to small sale shops’ habit of risk-avoidance. Without a proper selection of products, stores are unable to satisfy consumers’ needs; thus they focus on pushing certain products to increase demand. According to our results, ‘low price category’, ‘local/regional product’, and ‘prestige product’ strategies with attached in-store marketing elements are able to reverse the effects of an unfavourable marketing process

Relaxation dynamics of modulated magnetic phases in the skyrmion host GaV4S8: An ac magnetic susceptibility study

We report on the slow magnetization dynamics observed upon the magnetic phase transitions of GaV4S8, a multiferroic compound featuring a long-ranged cycloidal magnetic order and a N\'eel-type skyrmion lattice in a relatively broad temperature range below its Curie temperature. The fundamental difference between GaV4S8 and the chiral helimagnets, wherein the skyrmion phase was first discovered, lies within the polar symmetry of GaV4S8, promoting a cycloidal instead of a helical magnetic order and rendering the magnetic phase diagram essentially different from that in the cubic helimagnets. Our ac magnetic susceptibility study reveals slow relaxation dynamics at the field-driven phase transitions between the cycloidal, skyrmion lattice and field-polarized states. At each phase boundary, the characteristic relaxation times were found to exhibit a strong temperature dependence, starting from the minute range at low temperatures, decreasing to the micro- to millisecond range at higher temperatures

12C/13C isotopic ratios in red-giant stars of the open cluster NGC 6791

Carbon isotope ratios, along with carbon and nitrogen abundances, are derived in a sample of 11 red-giant members of one of the most metal-rich clusters in the Milky Way, NGC 6791. The selected red-giants have a mean metallicity and standard deviation of [Fe/H]=+0.39+-0.06 (Cunha et al. 2015). We used high resolution H-band spectra obtained by the SDSS-IV Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). The advantage of using high-resolution spectra in the H-band is that lines of CO are well represented and their line profiles are sensitive to the variation of 12C/13C. Values of the 12C/13C ratio were obtained from a spectrum synthesis analysis. The derived 12C/13C ratios varied between 6.3 and 10.6 in NGC 6791, in agreement with the final isotopic ratios from thermohaline-induced mixing models. The ratios derived here are combined with those obtained for more metal poor red-giants from the literature to examine the correlation between 12C/13C, mass, metallicity and evolutionary status.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 9 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Precision atomic gravimeter based on Bragg diffraction

We present a precision gravimeter based on coherent Bragg diffraction of freely falling cold atoms. Traditionally, atomic gravimeters have used stimulated Raman transitions to separate clouds in momentum space by driving transitions between two internal atomic states. Bragg interferometers utilize only a single internal state, and can therefore be less susceptible to environmental perturbations. Here we show that atoms extracted from a magneto-optical trap using an accelerating optical lattice are a suitable source for a Bragg atom interferometer, allowing efficient beamsplitting and subsequent separation of momentum states for detection. Despite the inherently multi-state nature of atom diffraction, we are able to build a Mach-Zehnder interferometer using Bragg scattering which achieves a sensitivity to the gravitational acceleration of $\Delta g/g = 2.7\times10^{-9}$ with an integration time of 1000s. The device can also be converted to a gravity gradiometer by a simple modification of the light pulse sequence.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

Aspergillus is monophyletic: Evidence from multiple gene phylogenies and extrolites profiles

Abstract Aspergillus is one of the economically most important fungal genera. Recently, the ICN adopted the single name nomenclature which has forced mycologists to choose one name for fungi (e.g. Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, etc.). Previously two proposals for the single name nomenclature in Aspergillus were presented: one attributes the name “Aspergillus” to clades comprising seven different teleomorphic names, by supporting the monophyly of this genus; the other proposes that Aspergillus is a non-monophyletic genus, by preserving the Aspergillus name only to species belonging to subgenus Circumdati and maintaining the sexual names in the other clades. The aim of our study was to test the monophyly of Aspergilli by two independent phylogenetic analyses using a multilocus phylogenetic approach. One test was run on the publicly available coding regions of six genes (RPB1, RPB2, Tsr1, Cct8, BenA, CaM), using 96 species of Penicillium, Aspergillus and related taxa. Bayesian (MrBayes) and Ultrafast Maximum Likelihood (IQ-Tree) and Rapid Maximum Likelihood (RaxML) analyses gave the same conclusion highly supporting the monophyly of Aspergillus. The other analyses were also performed by using publicly available data of the coding sequences of nine loci (18S rRNA, 5,8S rRNA, 28S rRNA (D1-D2), RPB1, RPB2, CaM, BenA, Tsr1, Cct8) of 204 different species. Both Bayesian (MrBayes) and Maximum Likelihood (RAxML) trees obtained by this second round of independent analyses strongly supported the monophyly of the genus Aspergillus. The stability test also confirmed the robustness of the results obtained. In conclusion, statistical analyses have rejected the hypothesis that the Aspergilli are non-monophyletic, and provided robust arguments that the genus is monophyletic and clearly separated from the monophyletic genus Penicillium. There is no phylogenetic evidence to split Aspergillus into several genera and the name Aspergillus can be used for all the species belonging to Aspergillus i.e. the clade comprising the subgenera Aspergillus, Circumdati, Fumigati, Nidulantes, section Cremei and certain species which were formerly part of the genera Phialosimplex and Polypaecilum. Section Cremei and the clade containing Polypaecilum and Phialosimplex are proposed as new subgenera of Aspergillus. The phylogenetic analysis also clearly shows that Aspergillus clavatoflavus and A. zonatus do not belong to the genus Aspergillus. Aspergillus clavatoflavus is therefore transferred to a new genus Aspergillago as Aspergillago clavatoflavus and A. zonatus was transferred to Penicilliopsis as P. zonata. The subgenera of Aspergillus share similar extrolite profiles indicating that the genus is one large genus from a chemotaxonomical point of view. Morphological and ecophysiological characteristics of the species also strongly indicate that Aspergillus is a polythetic class in phenotypic characters

Personal control of the indoor environment in offices: Relations with building characteristics, influence on occupant perception and reported symptoms related to the building-the officair project

Personal control over various indoor environment parameters, especially in the last decades, appear to have a significant role on occupants' comfort, health and productivity. To reveal this complex relationship, 7441 occupants of 167 recently built or retrofitted office buildings in eight European countries participated in an online survey about personal/health/work data as well as physical/psycho-social information. The relationship between the types of control available over indoor environments and the perceived personal control of the occupants was examined, as well as the combined effect of the control parameters on the perceived comfort using multilevel statistical models. The results indicated that most of the occupants have no or low control on noise. Half of the occupants declared no or low control on ventilation and temperature conditions. Almost one-third of them remarked that they do not have satisfactory levels of control for lighting and shading from sun conditions. The presence of operable windows was shown to influence occupants' control perception over temperature, ventilation, light and noise. General building characteristics, such as floor number and floor area, office type, etc., helped occupants associate freedom positively with control perception. Combined controlling parameters seem to have a strong relation with overall comfort, as well as with perception regarding amount of privacy, office layout and decoration satisfaction. The results also indicated that occupants with more personal control may have less building-related symptoms. Noise control parameter had the highest impact on the occupants' overall comfort

Polarization and Strong Infra-Red Activity in Compressed Solid Hydrogen

Under a pressure of ~150 GPa solid molecular hydrogen undergoes a phase transition accompanied by a dramatic rise in infra-red absorption in the vibron frequency range. We use the Berry's phase approach to calculate the electric polarization in several candidate structures finding large, anisotropic dynamic charges and strongly IR-active vibron modes. The polarization is shown to be greatly affected by the overlap between the molecules in the crystal, so that the commonly used Clausius-Mossotti description in terms of polarizable, non-overlapping molecular charge densities is inadequate already at low pressures and even more so for the compressed solid.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Ultrafast optical generation of coherent phonons in CdTe1-xSex quantum dots

We report on the impulsive generation of coherent optical phonons in CdTe0.68Se0.32 nanocrystallites embedded in a glass matrix. Pump probe experiments using femtosecond laser pulses were performed by tuning the laser central energy to resonate with the absorption edge of the nanocrystals. We identify two longitudinal optical phonons, one longitudinal acoustic phonon and a fourth mode of a mixed longitudinal-transverse nature. The amplitude of the optical phonons as a function of the laser central energy exhibits a resonance that is well described by a model based on impulsive stimulated Raman scattering. The phases of the coherent phonons reveal coupling between different modes. At low power density excitations, the frequency of the optical coherent phonons deviates from values obtained from spontaneous Raman scattering. This behavior is ascribed to the presence of electronic impurity states which modify the nanocrystal dielectric function and, thereby, the frequency of the infrared-active phonons