New EC Merger Regulation: A First Assessment of Its Practical Impact, The Symposium on European Competition Law

In the late evening of November 27, 2003, the Council of Ministers reached a political agreement on the amended text of the European Community Merger Regulation ( ECMR ), which is due to enter into force on May 1, 2004, the date for enlargement of the European Union. In the following article, the New ECMR will be assessed from a practitioner\u27s perspective. Since the new substantive test is being dealt with in another contribution to this Symposium, this analysis focuses on the jurisdictional and procedural issue

New EC Merger Regulation: A First Assessment of Its Practical Impact, The Symposium on European Competition Law

In the late evening of November 27, 2003, the Council of Ministers reached a political agreement on the amended text of the European Community Merger Regulation ( ECMR ), which is due to enter into force on May 1, 2004, the date for enlargement of the European Union. In the following article, the New ECMR will be assessed from a practitioner\u27s perspective. Since the new substantive test is being dealt with in another contribution to this Symposium, this analysis focuses on the jurisdictional and procedural issue

Phase transition and dynamical-parameter method in U(1) gauge theory

Monte Carlo simulations of the 4-dimensional compact U(1) lattice gauge theory in the neighborhood of the transition point are made difficult by the suppression of tunneling between the phases, which becomes very strong as soon as the volume of the lattice grows to any appreciable size. This problem can be avoided by making the monopole coupling a dynamical variable. In this manner one can circumvent the tunneling barrier by effectively riding on top of the peaks in the energy distribution which meet for sufficiently large monopole coupling. Here we present an efficient method for determining the parameters needed for this procedure, which can thus be implemented at low computational cost also on large lattices. This is particularly important for a reliable determination of the transition point. We demonstrate the working of our method on a 16^4 lattice. We obtain an equidistribution of configurations across the phase transition even for such a relatively large lattice size.Comment: 11 pages, latex, 2 figures included, uuencode

Simulated-tempering approach to spin-glass simulations

After developing an appropriate iteration procedure for the determination of the parameters, the method of simulated tempering has been successfully applied to the 2D Ising spin glass. The reduction of the slowing down is comparable to that of the multicanonical algorithm. Simulated tempering has, however, the advantages to allow full vectorization of the programs and to provide the canonical ensemble directly.Comment: 12 pages (LaTeX), 4 postscript figures, uufiles encoded, submitted to Physical Review

Validation of a spectral light scattering method to differentiate large from small particles in intraocular lenses.

A psychophysical approach has been designed to measure straylight from intraocular lenses (IOLs) in vitro. This approach uses a clinical straylight meter (C-Quant) and an observer's eye as optical detector. Based on this, we introduced a method for study of straylight-wavelength dependency for IOLs. This dependency can be used to distinguish between 2 types of scattering particles (small and large) as defined by Mie theory. Validation was performed using a turbidity standard and scattering filters. Several IOLs were analyzed to identify potential scattering sources. Large particles were found to predominate in scattering from the studied lenses. This was confirmed by straylight-angular dependency found in these IOLs

Was kosten Eurobonds?

Aus Sicht der bonitätsschwachen Länder des Euroraums ist die Forderung nach Eurobonds verständlich. Denn die damit verbundene nominale Zinskonvergenz hätte den Effekt, dass die Zinsen der unsolideren Länder merklich sinken. Im Gegenzug müsste Deutschland, würde es in Zukunft Eurobonds statt z.B. Bundesanleihen begeben, mit deutlich höheren Zinskosten als bisher rechnen. Das ifo Ins­titut rät angesichts der zu erwartenden Mehrkosten von der Einführung von Eurobonds ab.Öffentliche Schulden, Krise, Zinspolitik, Euro-Anleihe, Euro-Raum, Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion

Burgerville: Instilling a Sustainable Culture

From a single store to a regional chain, Burgerville has differentiated from other national chains by maintaining a strong relationship with its customers, supply partners, employees and the community. A case study from PSU\u27s School of Business delves deeper into Burgerville\u27s commitment to instilling a sustainability culture by assessing the impact of the company\u27s mission to Serve with Love. The analysis in this study covers Burgerville’s strategic changes in: Product development – BV\u27s commitment in using locally and seasonally sourced ingredients throughout its menu Supply chain management – BV\u27s approach to maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, and preferentially purchasing from Food Alliance certified producers. Use of renewable energy – BV\u27s purchase of wind power credits equal to 100% energy use in its restaurants and corporate headquarters. Recycling and composting – BV\u27s commitment to providing recycling and composting stations. In addition, nearly all of BV’s packaging materials come from 100% renewable materials. Employee relations – BV\u27s commitment to offering healthcare benefits to any employee working more than 20 hours per week. Training – BV’s commitment to training employees at all levels to convey its core beliefs in sustainability and community. Transparency – BV’s commitment to educating customers about exactly what they are eating by providing specific nutritional information on each receipt Burgerville\u27s commitment in implementing these strategic changes has shaped its reputation as the alternative place to go for quality, local, fast food

Agricultural Water Management in Brandenburg

The present study explores whether regional water resources can be used more efficiently by Brandenburg’s farming systems. A description of agriculture in Brandenburg today is followed by a systematic analysis of measures to raise the water efficiency. Brandenburg’s agricultural systems are divided into three sections: soil, plant production and livestock farming. Within these sections measures to increase water efficiency are listed and analysed with reference to five objective criteria for raising water use efficiency. In view of the complexity of farming systems in Brandenburg, general measures to raise water use efficiency could not be derived. Site-specific tillage practices and crop patterns adjusted to recent weather conditions may reflect the specific diversity of Brandenburg more efficiently

Design issues of a back-pressure-based congestion control mechanism

Congestion control in packet-based networks is often realized by feedback protocols -- in this paper we assess the performance under a back-pressure mechanism that has been proposed and standardized for Ethernet metropolitan networks. Relying on our earlier results for feedback fluid queues, we derive explicit expressions for the key perfomance metrics, in terms of the model parameters, as well as the parameters agreed upon in the service level agreement. Numerical experiments are performed to evaluate the main trade-offs of this model (for instance the trade-off between the signaling frequency and the throughput). These can be used to generate design guidelines. The paper is concluded by an elementary, yet powerful, Markovian model that can be used as an approximative model in situations of large traffic aggregates feeding into the system; the trade-offs and guidelines identified for the feedback fluid model turn out to carry over to this more stylized model

A feedback fluid queue with two congestion control thresholds

Feedback fluid queues play an important role in modeling congestion control mechanisms for packet networks. In this paper we present and analyze a fluid queue with a feedback-based traffic rate adaptation scheme which uses two thresholds. The higher threshold $B_{1}$ is used to signal the beginning of congestion while the lower threshold $B_{2}$ signals the end of congestion. These two parameters together allow to make the trade--off between maximizing throughput performance and minimizing delay. The difference between the two thresholds helps to control the amount of feedback signals sent to the traffic source. In our model the input source can behave like either of two Markov fluid processes. The first applies as long as the upper threshold $B_{1}$ has not been hit from below. As soon as that happens, the traffic source adapts and switches to the second process, until $B_{2}$ (smaller than $B_1$) is hit from above. We analyze the model by setting up the Kolmogorov forward equations, then solving the corresponding balance equations using a spectral expansion, and finally identifying sufficient constraints to solve for the unknowns in the solution. In particular, our analysis yields expressions for the stationary distribution of the buffer occupancy, the buffer delay distribution, and the throughput